A curiosity just a decade ago, portfolio trading has rapidly gained traction as a way for large institutional investment firms to buy and sell hundreds of corporate bonds in a single transaction.

About 50% of total investment grade bond trading volume, and 30% of high yield volume, was electronic in July 2025, according to Crisil Coalition Greenwich data. Portfolio trading comprised about 22% of e-trading volume.

“Portfolio trading is a massive improvement in efficiency,” said Peter Grant, Executive Director, Credit Portfolio, Algo and ETF Trading at JP Morgan. “It gives clients confidence to execute trades without having to worry about shortfalls in the tails of the risk.”

“It makes traders’ days significantly faster and easier, and it provides more transparency about what they can do, which means they can focus more on trading,” Grant told Markets Media. “It has also significantly increased the breadth of bonds that clients can find liquidity on.”

Portfolio trading was a frequently discussed topic at the 2025 Fixed Income Leaders Summit, held in June in Washington, DC. Conference speakers noted that usage of portfolio trading held strong through the tariff-induced ‘Liberation Day’ volatility spike in April, dispelling any lingering perception that the protocol is only indicated for calm markets.

Portfolio trading “has become an essential tool,” BlackRock Global Co-head of Trading Daniel Veiner said at FILS.

One-stop shop

Portfolio trading has quickly become a significant part of the bond market, now accounting for 12% of all bond trading, a 66% increase year over year and a 10% rise quarter over quarter according to TRACE data. Recognizing this growth, JP Morgan saw the need to rapidly develop a technology solution to help its clients navigate the evolving landscape. This led to the launch of Beta One, a new platform within Vida, JP Morgan’s multi-product, cross-asset portfolio offering.

Gurps Kharaud, Managing Director and Head of Vida Portfolio Solutions at JP Morgan, said Vida is meant to meet clients’ needs throughout the investment lifecycle, from pre-trade to post-trade, with four main empowerment themes: create, manage, analyze, and report.

“We want to be a one-stop shop,” Kharaud told Markets Media. “Clients can get thematic ideas from our Market Monitor. They can get our research content. They get our pricing. They can get all these different things from being in the JP Morgan ecosystem, and they’re able to see it all through our platforms.”

Portfolio trading facilitates risk transfer for buy-side investment firms, though the complexity and size of the transactions can be a challenge for dealers. Still, it improves efficiency for dealers compared with before portfolio trading, when liquidity aggregation tools helped some but for the most part dealers had to work line-by-line to try to understand a client’s trading needs and to execute trades.

“Portfolio trading has fundamentally changed the way JPMorgan thinks about risk,” Grant said. “We are thinking about risk in a more systematic way, across the board. We’re thinking much more comprehensively about hedging factors and features of the trades that come in, rather than de-grossing every single bond. That allows us to take the most advantage of the liquidity sources available to us, across algos, PT, high touch, and ETF markets.”

Dealer-to-client transparency is a key unique element of Beta One. Grant noted that as markets have become more systematic, dealers have been able to collect more data around trade protocols and execution, but that’s rarely shared with the clients who are making the trades.

“Beta One goes a long way toward bridging that gap,” Grant said. “Clients are able to access the full suite of JP Morgan liquidity data, so they can put together a trade that will improve cost effectiveness  to execute.”

Said one ultra-large investment manager: “The substance of the data is very good here; I’ll say it’s actually great.”

In the client-to-dealer direction, in a business where discretion on trade intent is critical, Beta One is set up to keep clients’ activity private. “We know what kinds of firms use the platform, but we have no knowledge of what they are doing,” Grant said.

Portfolio construction

Another feature of Beta One is optimization, which enables JP Morgan to be more proactive and collaborative with clients. Investment managers can effectively outsource some of their portfolio construction by leveraging the bank’s data and liquidity, which then crystallizes in the form of actionable portfolio trade ideas.

Said another large manager: “To be completely frank, it’s the best tool I’ve seen for a while.”

Regarding the growth in portfolio trading industry-wide, Grant said: “Each year it feels like there have been such large increases in the amount of portfolio business that this must be the time that it starts to tail off, but instead it just continues to accelerate.”

As portfolio trading has evolved from the fringe of the market to the mainstream, the business has become more competitive, and accordingly JP Morgan is raising the bar on Beta One’s capabilities.

Grant said there are plans to further differentiate Beta One, including trade execution for off-platform clients; thematic baskets to enable clients to track price movements and analytics of segments; and new tools for clients to construct their own trade ideas.

Beta One “brings the best of JPMorgan to the client,” Kharaud said. “We give clients the analytics to do the trade that bests suits their objectives, and then we use our fortress balance sheet and leading trading expertise to deliver the best possible pricing.”