You may have heard that the bees are threatened by parasites and cell phones, but the Canadian equity markets are a hive of activity. Between trading up a storm in our listed market and preparing for the launch of Pure Trading there is a lot going on inside and outside Canada’s new stock exchange.
The Pure Trading schedule is proceeding apace and by publication there will have been yet another successful industry wide test of the high speed, high capacity trading engine that Pure will use for its continuous auction market. Investment dealers realize that the competition that Pure represents will be to their benefit and ultimately to the benefit of their customers. Not only will trade execution costs be reduced by lower fees, there will be additional liquidity in the markets brought about by the entry of two new kinds of participants.

First there are the electronic traders in other countries who have avoided Canada because we didn’t have multiple marketplaces with trading systems that give the exceptionally fast responses that are necessary to the success of many trading strategies. Second there are the institutional players in Canada who have not been able to fully employ similar electronic trading methods to effect large portfolio transitions effectively. There is already a trend established by these large players to smaller and more frequent trades and this will continue when Pure is fully operational and the industry has adapted to the new multiple marketplace environment.

Meanwhile, the CNQ listed market continues to set new records for trading activity. Not only was April a record month for value ($19.2million) and the number of transactions (2,923 trades), those levels are dramatically higher than April of 2006 which, until then, was a record setting month itself. Taken year over year, value is up 90% and trades have increased by 40%. This reflects well on our listed companies whose stocks are trading, and on the broadening participation of Canadian investment dealers in our market.

We are pleased with the results of GoPublicInCanada.com, introduced last month, as both an educational tool and a means of helping new companies find CNQ, and find CNQ to their liking. A short report appears later in this issue.