IT overhaul helps London Stock Exchange increase trading

New trading platform prompts rise in transaction volumes ahead of expectations

Trading volumes increased after London Stock Exchange successfully implemented new trading platform

Trading volumes at the London Stock Exchange (LSE) hit an all time high last month following the successful launch of the organisation's new trading platform.

The TradeElect high-speed trading system was four years in the making and marked the successful conclusion of an IT transformation programme which enables faster and more efficient trading.

The average daily trading volume on the LSE last month was 535,578 trades, an increase of 62 per cent on June last year, while the average daily value traded also reached its highest levels, growing 43 per cent to £9bn.

The LSE says the reduced latency of TradeElect has increased capacity five-fold and helped raise trading levels.

‘One of the features of TradeElect that we were very careful to build into the system from the start was the ability to absorb extra volumes when the system experiences spikes in trading,’ said a spokesman.

‘This is vital for the algorithmic traders and black-box systems because when they all need capacity at the same time they still need to execute that trade very quickly while maintaining a latency of about 10 milliseconds.'

The LSE is planning an upgrade to TradeElect in October to further reduce latency and increase capacity.