Turnover of structured products and warrants on the Six Swiss Exchange in March was down by 20%, to CHF1.1bn (€933m), while the number of trades declined by 11.7% to 58,206. "Market turbulence in January and February led to a substantial increase in volatility and triggered enormous demand for risk-adjusted trades in leveraged as well as investment products," said Andre Buck (pictured), head of sales at Six.

"In January, we had the most turnover since August 2015, at over CHF1.84bn, but in March markets calmed down, volatility dropped and investors decided to observe market developments before investing," said Buck. "With close to 10,000 newly-listed products on our exchange and a daily average trading volume of CHF71m, against last year's CHF64m, customer demand across all products is unchanged although markets are more challenging."

There were 3,034 new structured products and warrants (down 2%) admitted to trading in March, taking this year's number to 9,722 (up 9.2%). "Markets will remain boxed in a trading range, so (multi-) barrier reverse convertibles will remain the top product on our exchange," said Buck. "More investors are looking at protecting their portfolio, so I expect good demand for put warrants and mini-futures."

A total of 2,242 structured products worth CHF369m were issued in March in Switzerland, according to SRP data. In terms of issuance, HSBC was the main distributor, with 2,048 products worth CHF2m, UBS ranked first in sales volume with 71 products worth CHF149m, followed by Leonteq with 65 new issues worth CHF137m. Compared to February, issuance decreased by 307%, from 9,126 products,while net sales went down by 83% from CHF2.1bn.

The performance of the most important equity indices was as follows in March: the SMI index closed at 8,741.0 points at the end of the month, down 1.9% month-on-month (-6.8% versus end-2017). The SLI Swiss Leader Index ended the month at 1,434.7 points, down 2.4% compared to February, while the broader-based SPI came in at 10,189.9 points, down -0.7% on a monthly basis. The SBI AAA-BBB Total Return index was up 0.5% versus February at 135.5 points.

Overall trading on Six in March was up by 1.8% on the prior month, to CHF125.9bn, equating to an average turnover of CHF6bn per trading day and there was also an increase in the number of transactions, which climbed by 1.1%, to 5,549,702. The highest turnover on a single day was recorded on March 16, which saw securities worth a total volume of CHF10.8bn changing hands. This was a triple witch day - usually the third Friday of the third month in the quarter - which is when futures and options expire. March 28 was the trading day on which the highest number of transactions was conducted, at 325,435. The stock that generated the highest turnover during the reporting month was Novartis, while Roche was the most-traded security.

For the first time in Six's history, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) accounted for the second-highest trading turnover over in a quarter, generating turnover of CHF31.6bn, which put them second behind equities. Trading turnover in ETFs fell by 34.6% to CHF8.1bn, with the number of trades down by 18.8% to 92,348.

Related stories:
Swissquote debuts AMC linked to basket of cryptocurrencies

Leonteq back on track, completes turnaround

UBS AM rolls out portfolio management hub