If you looked at the first 11 months of 2012 against the first 11 months of 2011, statistics compiled by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association would tell you that volume on the major national exchanges fell 19.6% in the first eleven months of 2012.
But then came December.
If you compile the results reported by the four major national exchange operators — NYSE Euronext, Nasdaq OMX, BATS Global Markets and Direct Edge –a different picture emerged in the last month of 2012.
Compared to a month earlier (November, 2012), trading volume was down 5.5 percent, when you tally up the individual reports of the four different exchange-operating firms.
But, year over year, volume was down “only” 8.7 percent.
Average daily volume handled by the four operators was 4.0 billion shares in December 2012 down from 4.4 billion in December 2011.
And 4.2 billion in November 2012.
Take out the drop from from November to December and the year over year drop was under 4 percent.
Not the nearly 20 percent drop reportted by SIFMA, for the first 11 months of the year.
