GLOBE NEWSWIRE – New York – MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq:MKTX), the operator of a leading electronic trading platform for fixed-income securities and the provider of market data and post-trade services for global fixed-income markets, today announced that it has expanded its execution choices for its municipal bond platform to include Muni Offerings. Muni Offerings allows municipal bond market participants to post and engage on inquiries using MarketAxess’ Axe pages. Single Request-for-Quote (RFQ) inquiry for both investors and dealers is also now available to users.

These enhancements complement existing, unique trading protocols – including Bid Wanted lists of up to 200 items, Open Trading™ and dealer inventory. The platform provides municipal bond market participants with more competitive markets and a more efficient way to execute block and odd lots, all in one single marketplace.

“Recent growth in the municipal bond market to more than $3.6 trillion underscores the need among market participants for broader access to liquidity, better price discovery and increased transparency in an easy to access platform,” said John Gallagher, Municipal Bond and Investment Grade Credit Product Manager. “More than 6,000 users log into MarketAxess’ electronic platform daily and it’s our goal to deliver a streamlined, systematic trading process that’s fully automated and driven by our clients’ specific needs.”

Key features of the expanded municipal bond platform include:

• Enhanced List Features & Preferences: Ability to copy/paste items into a bid or offer list, now including customizable limit levels for bids.
• New Historical Activity Page: Allows users to source historical price and trade activity inquiries with a 1 month to 1 years search range.
• Trade a Single Muni: Ability to send single client-to-dealer quote inquiry.
• Request for Quote (RFQ): Allows market participants the ability to initiate RFQs in an Open Trading™ environment.

With Over 16 years of leadership in e-trading, MarketAxess has grown steadily since going public in 2004 (NASDAQ:MKTX), boasting over 1,100 institutional investors and broker-dealer firms based in U.S., Europe, LatAm, and Asia-Pacific executing credit trading strategies across the bond spectrum.