Only a small few markets have been able to migrate more than half of trading volume to the screen.  FX trades roughly three-quarters of its volume electronically for instance.  Index CDS in the US trades over 90% of its volume...

A few weeks back I had a great conversation with Liquidnet’s head of Fixed Income trading and the head of InteractiveData’s evaluated pricing service. Both firms provide tools to the market that hope to improve transparency and ultimately lubricate...

High costs can be a barrier to success for any swap execution facility (SEF), but there’s more to it than that. Based on our conversations with the buy side, simple fee models are preferable. Thankfully most major SEFs have taken a transpar­ent...

I spent most of my summer digging through our 2014 North American fixed income data looking to see what's changed in the past year and what's the come. While the bulge bracket continues to dominate rates, mid-tier brokers are making some...

According to Liquidnet CEO Seth Merrin the corporate bond market is “a disaster waiting to happen”. A disaster? Maybe. But certainly it is a market waiting for better ways to match buyers and sellers. That is exactly what Liquidnet was thinking...

We've just released the results of our benchmark US equities study, based on almost 600 interviews with US equity investors.  While Greenwich has been conducting this study for literally decades, this is my first market structure analysis...

Over the past decade or so, the growth of OMS and EMS platforms has paralleled the growth of electronic trading – but it would be a stretch to suggest a direct cause-and-effect relationship. These days, though, given the growing importance of...

Spot FX trading volumes in the first quarter of 2014 dropped 25-30% from the same period last year.  From a macro-economic perspective, the reasons are relatively clear. In 2013, FX trading volumes were inflated by a surge of activity in the...

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...

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...