07.26.2013

Bond Trading Platform Offers Continuous Real-Time Pricing

07.26.2013
Terry Flanagan

DelphX, a fixed-income alternative trading system (ATS), aims to provide real-time, market-driven pricing information and open-access trading capabilities.

“The ATS is structured as an exchange with central clearing, and accommodates transactions in the primary market for issuers directly via anonymous bidding, either via single price auctions or when-issued trading,” said Larry Fondren, president and CEO of DelphX. “We handle fixed income securities from womb to tomb.”

Larry Fondren, DelphX

Larry Fondren, DelphX

Evidence-based valuation of most corporate, ABS/MBS and other fixed income securities is enabled by is proprietary MAV≡n protocol, which continuously adjusts, validates and publishes the fair-value price of every DelphX-listed security. “The purpose of MAV=n is to inform those who hold a security what tis value is, as well as those who are coming to market,” said Fondren. “Ninety-five percent of corporate bonds trade infrequently. Most are traded when they’re newly issued and at maturity, and the rest of the time they’re sitting on the shelf.”

DelphX has chosen Thomson Reuters Elektron Treasury Pricing Feed to calculate its real time fair-value pricing of more than 25,000 corporate bonds and to continuously adjust the Treasury-spread pricing of orders.

“By employing high-quality real time U.S. treasuries pricing data via our Elektron Real Time consolidated feed and by taking advantage of the speed and scalability of our Elektron managed services infrastructure, DelphX is able to provide in real time the best possible fair-value pricing service available to market participants,” said Dan Solak, global head of Elektron feeds at Thomson Reuters.

The intention of DelphX is to be a liquidity facilitator and a transparency provider. “It aggregates liquidity from traditional sell-side banks and regional broker-dealers, as well as alternative sources such as large buy-side firms, all of which can make markets on the platform,” Fondren said.

Thomson Reuters real time U.S. Treasury pricing feed and other streaming data will be employed by DelphX to calculate its MAV=n fair-value prices for corporate bonds, ABS/MBS and other fixed income securities.

Thomson Reuters data will also be used by DelphX to continuously adjust the prices of orders entered at a Treasury-Yield spread on its transparent ATS platform and to power its Sentine=l functionality, which facilitates anonymous interaction among the internal portfolio-management, market-making, trading and other systems of DelphX subscribers.

The global scope of Thomson Reuters, its array of real time fixed income information services, commitment to data quality and world-class infrastructure make it an ideal data partner for DelphX, said Fondren.

“The data and services provided by Thomson Reuters are a crucial element of our platform, which is dedicated to providing a transparent and level playing field to all market participants and facilitating deep price-sensitive liquidity provided by all participants, including issuers, investors and traditional liquidity sources,” he said.

Related articles

  1. The tokenized fund launched by BlackRock has helped boost the total.

  2. FINRA has begun disseminating individual transactions in active U.S. Treasuries at the end of the day.

  3. Tokenization of real world assets is estimated to reach $20 trillion by 2030.

  4. The hub has up to 150 data points on more than 14,000 listed GSSS bonds from over 3,000 issuers worldwide.

  5. Trade bodies signed a letter against the Sovereign Debt Stability Act, recently amended in New York State.