MarketAxess Holdings Inc. MKTX recently announced that Barclays (LON:BARC) PLC BCS has agreed to become its dedicated market maker. It is streaming prices for US investment grade corporate bonds to the MarketAxess Live Markets order book for institutional credit markets.
Notably, Barclays PLC is a major global banking and financial services company, which also joined Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and another systematic dedicated market maker as a streaming liquidity provider.
Launched in 2019, Live Markets gain traction from the anonymous all-to-all Open Trading marketplace. It offers a singular view of two-way, actionable prices for the most active US investment grade bonds comprising benchmark issues, recently-issued debt and news-driven securities. Institutional credit investors and dealers are allowed to place resting live orders in the market while engaging firm prices issued by investors and dealers just with one click.
This move is well-timed as the credit market is evolving and made it important to provide access to liquidity. Customers can now enjoy real-time, systematic liquidity at live markets. A slew of trading protocols will aid the participants in making the most of their trading strategy, thereby driving greater market turnover.
In this regard, it should be noted that volume conducted through Open Trading reached a milestone of $246.3 billion in the March quarter, up 20% year over year. It represents 33% of MarketAxess' total global credit trading volumes.
The Open Trading-led strengthened global liquidity reduced transaction costs worth $196 million for both liquidity takers and providers in the March quarter.
Shares of the company have lost 10.2% in the past year against its industry’s growth of 16.8%. However, the stock will likely bounce back owing to its growing top line, driven by a consistent increase in commission received on trading volumes and the inclusion of treasury trading commissions and a series of alliances.
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Further, MarketAxess is continuously expanding its presence in the U.S. credit market on the back of its Open Trading platform. The platform makes way for hassle-free trading by connecting worldwide market participants with more than 1,700 active institutional investors and dealer firms, thereby delivering cost savings through accelerating trading efficiencies. The company’s growing international business will also bump up overall revenues.
This operator of a leading electronic trading platform for fixed-income securities and a provider of market data and post-trade services currently has a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).
Stocks to Consider
Some better-ranked stocks in the same space are OTC Markets Group Inc. OTCM and Nasdaq, Inc. NDAQ, both presently holding a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
OTC Markets Group and Nasdaq have a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 33.5% and 8.3%, on average, respectively.
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