Debt trading poll 2008: All change in secondary markets
INVESTMENT BANKS ARE riven by fear – the reason why managers have removed virtually all risk from their trading desks. Not that they have much capital to support risk-taking anyway. Much of what has been taken for granted, in trading and investing in bond markets, is being re-evaluated.
But amid the gloom and dislocation, there are at last signs of organic repair in the debt markets. This is not a government-sponsored initiative to fix some broken aspect of the financial market. Agency brokers are returning to the debt markets, a development heralded as a return to the primacy of relationships. These are entrepreneurial forces seeking to leverage sales and trading experience to repair one of the biggest problems facing dealers and investors – secondary liquidity. These brokers aim to reconnect investors with each other, offering access to dark pools of liquidity that...
