What does this mean for the fixed-income markets?
Cost-efficiency. In lowering the start-up costs for new systems, electronic trading technology will lead to a plethora of new systems in the coming years. The Association’s 1998 Review of Electronic Transaction Systems reported that the number of electronic systems increased from 11 to 26 between 1997 and 1998 alone. Since Regulation ATS went into effect -- and I think this is the first time we’ve made these numbers public -- 37 ATSs have filed with the Commission. Of these, 15 trade fixed-income products. This underestimates the actual number of fixed-income electronic trading systems since single-dealer systems and systems that only trade government securities are excluded from the definition of an alternative trading system.
Besides start-up costs, electronic trading technology greatly lowers continuing operation costs by bringing significant efficiencies to the trading process. As we’ve seen in other markets, lowering trading costs inevitably leads to a dramatic increase in trading volumes.
Removing physical constraints on markets. Electronic trading technology also removes physical constraints such as geography and the number of market participants. In the equities markets, this has put significant pressure on the traditional floor-based exchanges to go fully electronic and demutualize. Of course, the fixed-income markets are much more decentralized than the equities markets. Upstairs trading in fixed-income dwarfs the trading on exchanges. Even so, it is somewhat telling that the NYSE, that bastion of floor-based trading, closed down its bond trading floor and went fully electronic.
But where the removal of physical constraints really is important for the fixed-income markets is on the international side. Electronic trading technology is collapsing fixed-income trading into one global market, opening up competitive opportunities and challenges for all market participants.