MarketAxess Holdings launched its electronic trading for consumer-backed ABS and preferred stocks on its e-trading platform.
ABS trading on MarketAxess started in February and currently has 14 dealers offering liquidity to the platform. It also has 100 institutional investor customers signed up to trade. Product coverage includes credit cards, equipment leases, floor-plans, student loans, timeshares and autos.
Meanwhile, it is the first electronic fixed-income marketplace to offer trading of preferred stocks for institutional investors, with liquidity offered by 13 dealers via the MarketAxess corporate bond platform.
Electronic trading of both ABS and preferred stocks takes place utilizing the patented MarketAxess request-for-quote (RFQ) trading system. Post-trade reporting is streamlined with MarketAxess' straight-through-processing (STP) capabilities.
"We have brought increased liquidity and transparency to the corporate bond markets through e-trading, and are pleased to leverage our award-winning platform for consumer ABS and preferred stock trading," Kelley Millet, president of MarketAxess said. "The introduction of these two new products comes as trading volumes on MarketAxess continue to show promising growth both in our core high grade products as well as in the "other" products category which includes high yield securities, emerging markets debt, agencies and credit default swaps (CDS)."
On April 27, as part of its 1Q11 earnings release, MarketAxess said that investment grade trading volumes grew 38.5% in the first quarter versus the same quarter last year.
Ttrading volume in the other products also increased by more than 78% over the same period, reflecting a wider demand for more diverse credit products on the MarketAxess platform.
"We are committed to offering the institutional marketplace access to a broad range of electronic fixed-income products across the full capital structure. ABS and preferred stock trading were launched in direct response to strong customer demand," said John Gallagher, U.S. investment grade product manager at the firm.
MarketAxess is the operator of an electronic trading platform for U.S. and European high-grade corporate and emerging markets bonds as well as other types of fixed-income securities.
