Canadians are trading stocks at a frenzied pace.
The amount of stock market activity in Canada soared during February as investors bought and sold shares in companies such as BlackBerry (TSX:BB) and Air Canada (TSX:AC)
Total volume on all TMX equity markets, which includes The Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange, rose to 26.2 billion in February, up from 20.6 billion in January and 12 billion in February 2020.
The value of transactions in February of this year increased 10.9% to $251.8 billion compared with January of this year and the number of transactions in February jumped 15.6% from the previous month. The average daily volume in February was 1.38 billion, with nearly 1.9 million transactions valued at nearly $13.3 billion.
Belief that the economy will reopen strongly as COVID-19 vaccines are distributed has led investors to buy travel stocks such as Air Canada, which has seen its shares rise 23% so far this year.
Canadian investors seem to be interested in large-cap stocks, penny stocks, cannabis companies, Bitcoin and whatever else is moving markets on a particular day, week or month.
That includes the Reddit crowd, which spawned a social media-based movement that sent shares of companies such as BlackBerry and GameStop (NYSE:GME) in the U.S. soaring.
Canada's largest stock market, the TSX, accounted for 79% of the total trades in February and 87% of the total value. There was an average of 1.5 million transactions a day, valued at a total of $11.5 billion, up from 1.26 million in January worth nearly $10 billion.
