DTCC Hits New Record for Transactions Processed on April 15

by Edward C. Kelleher

DTCC processed a record 34.8 million transactions on April 15, surpassing by 8% the previous record of 32.2 million transactions set on January 4, 2005.

DTCC, through its National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC) subsidiary, provides clearance and settlement services of virtually all broker-to-broker trades done on the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, the American Stock Exchange and all the regional exchanges and electronic communications networks (ECNs) in the United States.

“This is the second time this year that we’ve seen a new daily record for the number of processed equity transactions,” said Thomas Costa, DTCC managing director and general manager for Equity Clearance and Settlement. “The average daily volume for the first three months of 2005 alone is well above last year’s daily average volume – 26.2 million transactions in 2005 versus and an average of 22.9 million transactions in 2004.

“But staying ahead of the curve is a high priority at DTCC and we continually expand our capacity to handle unpredictable spikes in volumes as they occur,” he added
In 2004, DTCC for the first time cleared and settled securities trades worth more than $1 quadrillion ($1,000,000,000,000,000).

AT NSCC, each transaction represents either one buy or one sell side of a trade. The 34.8 million transactions on April 15 represented a total of 4.6 billion shares traded that day.

Aside from providing the capacity to process transactions on high volume days, NSCC also reduces the number of trade obligations requiring financial settle-ment through a process called “netting,” which both minimizes securities movement and reduces risk for the industry. On the peak day of April 15, NSCC reduced financial obligations from $768.3 billion to $16.9 billion, a netting factor of 98%.  @