Executive Summary
Electronic trading in U.S. investment-grade corporate bonds has reached 20% of total market volume in 2015.
While low relative to other markets, this represents 25% growth year-over-year. The buy side reports improving liquidity, but the source of that improvement is unclear.
There has been a tremendous push for new e-trading methods for corporate bonds, and an increasing interest in all-to-all platforms.
In both investment-grade and high-yield, new trading protocols and platforms allow not only for different methods of trade execution, but also for execution of trades that otherwise would not have been consummated at all.
Methodology