MarketAxess Holdings, the operator of an electronic trading platform for fixed-income securities, and the provider of market data and post-trade services for the global fixed-income markets, announced the development of Live Markets – a live order book trading model for the institutional fixed income markets. It is expected to launch in the second half of 2019 and will initially support US Investment Grade corporate bonds.
Tapping into the anonymous all-to-all Open Trading marketplace, which connects global participants to trade bonds, Live Markets will create a single view of two-way, actionable prices for the most active bonds, including newly issued debt, benchmark issues and news-driven securities. Through the Live Markets order book, Open Trading participants will improve their trading capacity by more efficiently trading liquid names in larger size and accessing integrated real-time market data, such as Composite+. A diverse group of market makers have already indicated support for Live Markets.
Volume conducted via Open Trading grew to over $134 billion in the first quarter of 2019, up 66% from the first quarter of the prior year, and now represents 26% of MarketAxess’ total global trading volumes. The enhanced global liquidity offered through Open Trading drove estimated transaction cost savings of $51 million for liquidity takers and $44 million for liquidity providers in the first quarter of 2019.