MarketAxess Holdings, the operator of a leading electronic trading platform for fixed-income securities, and the provider of market data and post-trade services for the global fixed-income markets, announced a series of new enhancements for clients using portfolio trading on the MarketAxess platform to better integrate with a full suite of trading solutions.

#Portfoliotrading is only around 3.5% of the US #HighGrade and US #HighYield market today, but our technology and data are making it more efficient. We've enhanced our capabilities to sit seamlessly alongside existing list RFQ functionality: https://t.co/VlpMkYoevh pic.twitter.com/d46exRWNLe

— MarketAxess (@MarketAxess) June 23, 2021

 MarketAxess has enhanced its portfolio trading solution to include support for multi-directional lists and multi-currency lists, designed to sit seamlessly alongside existing list RFQ functionality. These enhancements give clients a streamlined workflow to efficiently execute single, list and portfolio trades according to their preferred strategy. Integrated net spotting capabilities are also available through MarketAxess’ trading protocols, including portfolio trading, backed by the superior pricing available via the MarketAxess Rates marketplace, formerly LiquidityEdge.  

Portfolio trading today accounts for a small but growing portion of the U.S. credit market with approximately $1.5 billion in average daily volume, or an estimated 3.8% of U.S. High Grade and U.S. High Yield TRACE volume.  Since the recent technology release in late-May, more than 50 portfolio trades have been completed on MarketAxess with 17 unique investor firms and 9 dealers. 

 “We’ve seen a steady but important increase in client adoption of portfolio trading since enhancing our service,” commented Kevin McPherson, Global Head of Sales with MarketAxess. “Certainty of execution across a broad basket of instruments has become more important to our clients, particularly at the illiquid end of the spectrum.  We’ve enhanced both our pricing data and our portfolio trading tools to provide a complete set of efficient tools to address clients’ execution objectives.” 

 Paul Glezer, who leads J.P. Morgan’s North American Portfolio Trading team commented, “J.P. Morgan continues to see rapid growth in its portfolio trading business globally. Clients benefit from additional avenues of interaction with dealers when looking to leverage the liquidity tool that portfolio trading has become. Additionally, high quality data and workflow efficiency for both the buy-side and sell-side continues to be the main drivers in this space.”

Andrew Ruskulis, Director in the Global Fixed Income team at MacKay Shields LLC, added, “Efficiency and certainty of execution are two critical factors driving the demand for portfolio trading.  Technology that improves the likelihood of execution through more dynamic workflows and combines deep liquidity with the use of benchmark pricing, such as Composite+, to confidently execute complicated lists is in our view a game changer.”

MarketAxess’ portfolio trading solution provides fast, efficient execution for up to 1,800 list items. It incorporates the firm’s AI-powered Composite+ benchmark pricing that provides real-time pricing content at the individual bond and portfolio level. Through extensive data capabilities, advanced analytics are available allowing traders to determine execution potential on the portfolio.   

Source: MarketAxess