Emerging market volumes have jumped in September, hitting levels not seen since April 2025, when the US trade taxes on imported goods from every other country first kicked off.
Using MarketAxess TraX data, which follows activity across multiple markets, and its CP+ pricing service, The DESK has found that volume for USD emerging market bonds hit US$41 billion on the week of 14 September, and weekly volume stayed above US$35 billion all month.
Trade count broke 31000 on three weeks in September, having only done so on five other weeks throughout the year.
That’s a lot of trading for 2025, given the relative levels eve after a trade war kicked off.
A big driver is investor appetite. Morgan Stanley estimates globally-mandated EMDD funds saw inflows of US$1.6 billion last week and US$1.2bn the week before, of whom hard currency funds got inflows of US$801m last week and US$393m the week prior.
Another aspect is issuance which including corporate and sovereign is at record levels year to date, and jumped in September with US$29.4bn in issuance last week, on top of US$20.4bn the previous week.
For dealers, EM is the place to be as volumes spiked in September, and getting rapid access to support investors in either primary or secondary markets is likely to drive revenues for Q3 going into Q4.
©Markets Media Europe 2025
