MarketAxess Offers More Choices for Muni Participants

MarketAxess Holdings Inc. said it expanded its execution choices for its municipal bond platform to include Muni Offerings.

Muni Offerings allows municipal bond market participants to post and engage on inquiries using MarketAxess' Axe pages. Single Request-for-Quote (RFQ) inquiry for both investors and dealers is also now available to users.

These enhancements complement existing, unique trading protocols - including Bid Wanted lists of up to 200 items, Open Trading and dealer inventory. The platform provides municipal bond market participants with more competitive markets and a more efficient way to execute block and odd lots, all in one single marketplace.

"Recent growth in the municipal bond market to more than $3.6 trillion underscores the need among market participants for broader access to liquidity, better price discovery and increased transparency in an easy to access platform," John Gallagher, municipal bond and investment grade credit product manager, said this week. "More than 6,000 users log into MarketAxess' electronic platform daily, and it's our goal to deliver a streamlined, systematic trading process that's fully automated and driven by our clients' specific needs."

Key features of the expanded municipal bond platform include enhanced list features and preferences, which will give the ability to copy and paste items into a bid or offer list, now including customizable limit levels for bids; a new historical activity page that allows users to source historical price and trade activity inquiries with a one month to one year search range; trade a single muni, that allows the user to send single client to dealer quote inquires; and  the feature that allows market participants to initiate RFQs in an open trading environment.

MarketAxess has been around for 16 years, and is four months into its expansion into munis. According to Gallagher, the company has been involved in over 3000 trades, that translates to almost $1 billion in trading volume. He said that dealers and investors want to connect to us because they know the value they bring to the market, and they have a strong track record of delivering what they promise.

"The biggest demand that we received was for offerings.  Dealers and clients were big proponents of having that functionality on our platform. With it, it's the best of all worlds, as there are more eyes on their bonds which will hopefully lead to better execution for them," said Gallagher, in an interview with the Bond Buyer at its California public finance conference.

Gallagher said the platform has about 105 dealers now and expects to increase that number to at least 120 by the end of the year. On the buyside there are almost 300 clients, some of which have come from international investors.

"We have brought a lot of functionality quickly to the market and in our eyes there is no competitor, as other platforms are retail focused. That's not our world. We are focused on the institutional market, the top tier," Gallagher said. "We have gained traction quickly. It was a big undertaking in terms of dollars and people. A start up could not do this."

With MarketAxess, he said, users have the capability to trade taxable, munis and Build America Bonds in spread protocol and in real time. Clients and dealers can see inventory, markets and offerings in one place. The platform also provides evaluations as well as MSRB data.

"We wanted to give them both pre and post data to help them make their trading decisions," said Gallagher. "Our focus is to make trading more efficient and transparent. We are now working a different piece of the market but it's not a lot different than the credit platform."

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
Buy side
MORE FROM BOND BUYER