Tag: electronic trading

Electronic trading of bonds is growing – sort of…

We all know that the massive reduction in dealer inventories and the cost of capital has had a huge negative impact on liquidity in the corporate bond market.  While the primary market has helped soften the blow, that crutch isn’t going to be here for long as rates start to rise over the next few […]

Impartial Access: The CFTC Isn’t Messing Around This Time

The CFTC issued a slew of new guidance and rules last week, two of them particularly interesting and impactful.  First was the rule that requires clearinghouses to have credit facilities available to back up all margin posted in US Treasuries.  I (and pretty much every one else in the market) think this is ridiculous.  If […]

Mandatory SEF Trading Does Not Equal Mandatory Electronic Trading

Forgive me if I’m stating the obvious for some of you, but I’ve had this conversation more than once and felt some clarity was in order here. As we work through the made available to trade (MAT) process, it’s important to reemphasize what actually will be required on mandatory SEF trading day 1. It all […]

Old Trading Strategies brought to the New Swaps Market

When automated market-making meets an already liquid market backed by real money trades, arbitrage opportunities quickly follow, which is the direction most liquid portions of the swaps market are moving.  Even in this pre-regulation implementation time that continues to linger, adoption of electronic trading is finally starting to gain momentum.  Data from Bloomberg, CreditEx and […]

Swaps Platform Urges 'Better Than TRACE' Reporting Jumbo Trades (Wall Street Journal)

Defining a “block trade” in the swaps market is one of the many jobs of the regulators in the next few months.  As this story points out, average trade sizes for swaps change drastically based on product and market conditions making it pretty difficult to set a single number.  Maybe more important is the reporting […]

Flash Crash spotlights financial IT risks (Institution of Engineering and Technology)

The Flash Crash may very well be talked about more these days than the credit crisis.  Not only is it an area of interest for regulators and traders but technologists as well.  IET takes a look at the issue from a technology perspective in this article. ‘It seems to be more of a market structure […]

Goldman Alums To Launch Equity SEF (Derivatives Week)

This is the first announced equity swap focused SEF I’ve come across.  The people at the help of this company come from Goldman Sachs electronic trading and have an interesting approach that is worth keeping an eye on.  I’m sure there will be many more SEF announcements to come in the the next few months, […]