thinkFolio connects with Lucera’s LumeALFA Analytics and Neptune Axes

Dan Barnes
2277

IHS Markit, the information, analytics and solutions provider, has established connectivity between its thinkFolio investment management platform and Lucera and Neptune, to support access to pre-trade data and liquidity signals.

Lucera’s LumeALFA Analytics is a new lighter version of its LumeALFA service, a fixed income data aggregation and market surveillance tool designed to provides users with a consolidated view of pre-trade liquidity data from electronic venues and dealer inventory feeds, as well as connectivity to client-selected execution venues, including single dealer executions.

LumeALFA Analytics is designed to provide a real-time view of the entire bond market, including government bonds, investment-grade and high-yield corporates, emerging markets, municipal debt and structured credit.
It is hoped that Lucera’s connectivity to IHS Markit’s thinkFolio will enable mutual clients of Lucera and IHS Markit to interact with and use pre-trade liquidity data and message parsing provided by IHS Markit to help them streamline trading decisions and facilitate best execution analyses.

Portfolio managers and traders using thinkFolio can use LumeALFA Analytics to help target, search for and sync specific liquidity profiles that support portfolio construction, relative value analyses and rebalancing while also providing watch lists that alert users to particular market activity.

As part of its liquidity data delivery model, thinkFolio clients can now also access Neptune’s aggregated, real-time axes and inventory directly in the context of other market data. Neptune standardises large volumes of unstructured data and aggregating liquidity across a community of sell-side dealers reducing the ‘noise and thereby enabling better informed trading decisions.

Neptune now reportedly carries over US$450 billion in daily gross notional across 70,000 axes and inventory items from well over 38,500 individual bonds. They cover 28 denominations across credit (IG/HY), emerging markets, rates and newer additions in ABS/MBS and municipals.

“As we evolve the thinkFolio platform and deliver the next-generation version of the application, openness and flexibility are foundational principals to support seamless integration with third-party and IHS Markit content and services,” said Brett Schechterman, global head of thinkFolio at IHS Markit. “Optimal desktop real-estate utility and direct access to actionable liquidity will remain paramount for our portfolio manager and trader personas. Our exciting collaboration with both Lucera and Neptune delivers high-quality pre-trade data and liquidity signals allowing our clients to drive alpha generation and workflow efficiency.”

“For the buyside community, the interoperable toolset of thinkFolio and LumeALFA Analytics can increase the likelihood of a successful trade and has the potential to continuously deliver improvements to price discovery and best execution analysis,” said Paul Mutter, head of global Fenics sales at BGC Partners. “We’re thrilled to expand our relationship with IHS Markit and to connect to thinkFolio to deliver a streamlined experience for mutual clients. The efficiency and scale achieved from thinkFolio capabilities and LumeALFA Analytics’ comprehensive and time-stamped pre-trade information will be conducive to cost savings and greater alpha generation.”

“Neptune has seen tremendous support from dealers and buy-side clients who have collaborated closely with us and each other, to create an open, standard and technology-based utility,” said Byron Cooper-Fogarty, interim CEO at Neptune Networks Ltd. “thinkFolio clients will now have the ability to consume an aggregated feed of the highest quality bond axes, which in turn allows them to be more targeted in their enquiries for large size bond execution.”

©Markets Media Europe, 2021
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