NZX trades down last month in volume and value

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The volume and value of cash trading on New Zealand's stock exchange fell last month from a year earlier.

The total number of trades dropped 5.7 per cent to 100,867 in December from the same month in 2013 and the total value traded slid 1.8 per cent to $2.8 billion, the Wellington-based NZX said in its monthly shareholder metrics.

The daily average trading volume declined 10 per cent to 4803, and the daily average value traded fell 6.5 per cent to $134 million.

Equity transactions dropped 5.9 per cent to 98,600, and the value traded slipped 1 per cent to $2.7 billion.

Debt transactions rose 3 per cent to 2267 but the value was down 24 per cent to $68 million.

For the year, the number of trades rose 9.8 per cent to 1.3 million, but the total value traded fell 17 per cent to $35 billion.

Some $4.74 billion of new capital was listed last year through initial public offerings and compliance listings, ahead of the $1.71 billion of new debt issues.

Meanwhile, $2.4 billion of capital was raised in 2014, 94 per cent of it equity and the remainder debt.

The stock market had $96.5 billion of equity at the end of December, up 17 per cent from the previous year and accounting for 42.1 per cent of gross domestic product. It had $13.2 billion of debt, down 2.4 per cent from the year earlier and accounting for 5.8 per cent of GDP.

The NZX 50 Index rose 17.5 per cent in December from the year earlier to close at 5568.