Stock Trading Is Still Falling After ’08 Crisis

The New York Times reports:

Even though American stocks have doubled in price in the last three years, investors and traders large and small keep giving the market the cold shoulder.

Trading in the United States stock market has not only failed to recover since the 2008 financial crisis, it has continued to fall. In April, the average daily trades in American stocks on all exchanges stood at nearly half of its peak in 2008: 6.5 billion compared with 12.1 billion, according to Credit Suisse Trading Strategy.

The decline stands in marked contrast to past economic recoveries, when Americans regained their taste for stock trading within two years of economic shocks in 1987 and 2001.

This time around, the stock market has many more players, including high-speed trading firms, which have recently come to account for over half of all stock market activity. But even they, like all other major groups, have recently been doing less overall trading.

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