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Hong Kong's stock market will trend upward with high volatility in the second half of 2009, according to Mr. Liang (Michael) WEN, Chief Investment Officer of CSOP Asset Management Ltd. ("CSOP"), an asset management joint-venture between China Southern Fund Management Co. Ltd. and Oriental Patron Financial Group. Approved by the China Securities Regulatory Commission ("CSRC"), CSOP is the first overseas subsidiary company set up by a Chinese asset manager.

The IPO pipeline stood at 28 registrants as of June 30, 2009, down 36 percent from the 44 registrants as of Q1 (March 31, 2009), according to the quarterly Ernst & Young LLP US IPO Pipeline study. This reflects both renewed IPO activity and the aging of older registrants.

The volume of United States (US) initial public offerings (IPOs) continued to remain low in the first half of 2009. For the first six months, there were only 14 IPOs that raised $2.3 billion, a significant drop from the 43 offerings that generated $27.7 billion for the same period in 2008. The first half of 2008 saw the largest US IPO in history, the $ 17.9 billion Visa Inc. IPO, which skewed the amount of proceeds raised during that period. By comparison, the largest IPO in the first half of 2009 was the $720 million Mead Johnson Nutrition Co. IPO.

American and global depositary receipt (DR) trading volume increased 14% to a record 72.1 billion DRs during the first six months of 2009 according to The Bank of New York Mellon, the world's leading depositary bank. As expected, DR trading value was significantly lower than records set one year ago. During the first six months of 2009 $1.3 trillion of DRs traded on U.S. and non-U.S. markets and exchanges.

NYSE Euronext announced trading volumes for its global cash equities and derivatives exchanges for June 20091. Trading volumes in June 2009 generally receded from May 2009 levels, but ended the quarter with solid increases year-over-year across all venues, including increases of 24.9% in U.S. cash trading, 6.1% in European cash trading, 10.2% in European derivatives and 71.3% in U.S. equity options. European interest rate derivatives average daily volume (“ADV”) in June were at their highest levels since April 2008.

A total of 19.6 million equity trades were carried out across London Stock Exchange Group’s electronic order books during June 2009, with a combined value of £152.5 billion (€178.1 billion).

Global IPO activity increased in Q2 with 76 IPOs worldwide compared with 52 the prior quarter, according to Ernst & Young's second quarter Global IPO update. Deal value increased seven-fold to US$9.9 billion from just US$1.4 billion. However activity remains sharply down on 2008 levels when the second quarter saw 269 IPOs raise US$38.2 billion in capital.

CME Group announced that June volume averaged 11.4 million contracts per day, down 20 percent from June 2008, but up 6 percent from May 2009. Total volume was 251 million contracts for June, of which 79 percent was traded electronically. Electronic volume averaged 9.0 million contracts per day, down 21 percent from the prior June, but up 6 percent sequentially.

In a recent survey of 127 institutional investors, TheMarkets.com found that nearly 40% of those surveyed think that the market has already rebounded, hitting its bottom earlier this year.

There have been only seven IPOs in Japan during the first five months of 2009. The seven offerings procured a total of 8 billion yen. But only 2.6 billion yen, or 32%, came from stock sold to the public.