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The sector is about to undergo a serious dealer-led attempt to boost electronic trading in the B2C space (see The coming revolution in fixed income e-trading, Euromoney, August 2007). But inter-dealer brokers and the dealers themselves were chuckling last month on news that Cantor Fitzgerald has launched a new swaps site on Bloomberg. Such a product launch does not normally set the world alight, only tech geeks would get excited about protocols and such. But the world of broking is still very old school – its "professionals" tend to use very colourful language. So it is highly unfortunate that to access the new Cantor swaps service, users of have to type CNTS.
Another unfortunate ticker came to Euromoney’s attention recently. Fortunately Carlyle Capital Corporation (CCC) is not the actual name of a bond SPV, but it is a closed-end fund that invests primarily in fixed-income instruments. That 95% of these are triple A rated will be a relief, although the 5% bucket that can buy the unrated tranches of CDOs and mezz RMBS CDO could be a concern to some. Despite the undoubted competence that Carlyle has shown as a manager in the past, given the current credit market jitters typing in CCC as a ticker cannot inspire confidence in your typical investor.