Yes, 2014 was a good year for the equities market – volume wise, commission wise and job wise – and not just for the larger players. OTC Markets, like its larger NYSE, NASDAQ and BATS brethren, saw its profits rise on dollar volume growth.
OTC Markets reported that total dollar volume of OTCQX, OTCQB and OTC Pink securities increased 19 percent last year to $238.4 billion. Total dollar volume of securities on OTCQX, its leading marketplace, increased a whopping 22 percent to $36.1 billion and represented 15 percent of total dollar volume of trading on all marketplaces last year.
Also, OTC Markets saw 34 U.S. community banks joined its OTCQX marketplace in 2014 as a result of new tailored OTCQX qualification requirements it introduced for banks last spring.
Furthermore, OTC introduced more stringent OTCQB Venture Marketplace standards on May 1, 2014, which led to a number of OTCQB companies being downgraded to the OTC Pink marketplace, which consequently resulted in a 28 percent decline in the number of OTCQB securities in 2014 and a 15 percent decline in OTCQB dollar volume during the year.
As of December 31, 2014, 311 companies were approved and traded on the OTCQB Venture Marketplace. Rollout of the OTCQB improvements will continue through July 30, 2015, with a majority of existing OTCQB companies facing compliance deadlines in the first half of 2015. Existing OTCQB companies have a choice of meeting the new OTCQB standards, choosing to qualify for OTCQX or being downgraded to OTC Pink.
