The audience at FILS USA got an in-depth insight into optimising front office technology on Thursday, with a detailed analysis of how desktop interoperability tools can be used to support traders, including their role…
Fixed income trading is well beyond the request for quote (RFQ)-only era, i.e. when the only way for a trader to find the other side of a transaction was by canvassing brokers. But while…
Treasury launches new effort to improve resilience of its market
The US Department of the Treasury, in consultation with the Inter-Agency Working Group on Treasury Market Surveillance (IAWG), has taken the next step in its…
As fixed income market participants eye the threat of a further back-up in yields, liquidity sourcing is being reassessed.
While technology has greatly advanced the capabilities of the trading desk, when bond prices swoon, the…
Getting the next generation of traders to have the right skills and capabilities, without losing the existing market knowledge, requires traders to be multi-faceted, the audience at FILS USA 2022 heard on Thursday.
“It's completely…
The turbulence in fixed income markets over the past six months likely will continue through the second half of 2022, according to Seth Bernstein, President and CEO of AllianceBernstein.
“The Fed has never engineered a…
European including of government bonds within its consolidated tape, and a new joint venture amongst platform giants Bloomberg, MarketAxess and Tradeweb, could allow Europe to leapfrog the US in terms of market transparency. The…
The rollout of FDC3 as a standard to support desktop interoperability between different applications has generated considerable interest in the trading community.
Dwayne Middleton, global head of fixed income trading at T Rowe Price says,…
Every trader attending FILS will be keeping an eye on the markets, as bid-ask spreads continue to tick upwards and volumes remain choppy.
Looking at corporate bond trading volumes over the past two weeks, data…
The buzz at FILS this year reflects the three-year hiatus from in-person events – and the amount of change that has occurred since then.
Discussion between buy-side traders on the Buy-Side Only Innovation Day…
Reaching out into the market to find the other side of a trade is contingent upon the right approach, be that a particular trading protocol or the best pre-trade selection of a specific counterparty.
The…
The Fixed Income Leaders’ Summit (FILS) USA will this year begin after a period of difficult liquidity in bond markets.
MarketAxess data showed trading volumes halve in May for both US and European investment grade…
Bloomberg, MarketAxess and Tradeweb Markets today jointly issued the following statement:
“We are pleased to announce an initiative to jointly explore the delivery of a consolidated tape for fixed income instruments in the European Union,…
This page is dedicated to reports from The Fixed Income Leaders Summit, Nashville, 22-24 June, 2022. More content will follow from Wednesday 29th June onwards. Sessions on the 22nd June, the Buyside Evaluation day, will not be reported.
While every attempt is made to record delegates accurately and obtain quote approval prior to publishing if there are any inaccuracies please contact Dan Barnes.
The economic effect of the Russian invasion of Ukraine needs to be put in context next to the human tragedy, but data is showing us the effect on the flow of capital; it is massive and not confined to those two countries.
Firstly, we look at the pricing of bonds from both Ukraine and Russia, in data supplied by CreditSights. Talking Ukraine first, CreditSights notes that the market is pricing in the likelihood of a default, although the country’s Debt Management Office had reiterated that it will continue to services its debt, and Ukraine was able to raise several hundred million dollars of investments through a one-year bond issued earlier this week which was designed to support the war effort.
The outlook for Russia, by contrast is agreed by many analysts to be very uncertain going forward as liquidity supplied by markets is likely to be badly impacted by the sanctions levelled at individuals, corporations, state departments and the central bank. With even commodity and energy traders privately shunning trade with Russia in areas that fall outside of sanctions, concerns are high that even a cessation of violence would not be lead to a recovery in a timely fashion.
Yet we also see the impact of the disruption created by the war impacting the cost of liquidity elsewhere. MarketAxess data shows us the bid/ask spreads in European bonds are increasing in direct correlation with the ongoing conflict.
Source: MarketAxess
This is most notable in high yield bonds, where the recent uptick in spreads is quite pronounced, with typical spreads rising from €0.22 in the week of January 23 to €0.35 this week.
In European investment grade (IG), we see an increase in spreads in recent weeks as well, with a current median spread of €0.13 vs €0.10 in the first week of January while it is less pronounced in UK investment grade debt.
Emerging market European debt has seen very significant widening of spreads in the last two weeks, and MarketAxess data shows this week’s median spread at almost €0.33 against €0.25 in the first week of January.
Source: MarketAxess
Even in the US spreads are widening, and with debate around imports of Russian oil and gas ongoing at the time of going to press, it is clear the American economy will be directly affected by the situation.
Source: MarketAxess
However, while US IG and HY spreads have widened somewhat over the past few weeks, they are still relatively stable, with USD IG and USD HY spreads around 2.94 bps and $0.28 this week, respectively.