TradeWeb, the online fixed-income trading platform, says institutional investors traded a record $5.4 trillion in fixed-income securities on its platform in the first quarter, up 42% from the same period last year and a 15% increase on the fourth quarter of 2003. The firm says the volume growth was distributed across the entire range of ten online fixed-income markets available on TradeWeb’s network.
Average daily volume rose to over $85 billion. Trades over $100 million now represent 47% of total volume indicating a wide acceptance of electronic trading by institutional investors to execute larger trades. In fact, a $5 billion dollar trade – the largest ever done over TradeWeb – was executed during this past quarter. Growing adoption of TradeWeb’s straight-through processing functionality by both dealers and buy-side customers resulted in a 41% increase in allocated trade ticket volume in the first quarter over the same quarter the previous year.
“We are off to a very strong start in 2004. TradeWeb is extending its lead as the largest source of online liquidity between dealers and their customers. Combined with our premium real-time market data and STP services we are building a unique workflow solution for our customers,” says Jim Toffey, CEO of TradeWeb. “In the next quarter we will expand our product offering with the launch of U.S. Corporate Bonds, an innovative execution platform that is one step ahead of what is currently available in the marketplace.”
“Trading activity continues to surge in European trading products, with record volumes of $432 billion up a staggering 63% on the same period in 2003,” says Lee Olesky, CEO of TradeWeb Europe. “We are particularly delighted with the runaway success of the UK Gilts platform, launched on 21 January 2004 – with trading volume for March showing a 51% increase on the previous month at 4.7 billion.”
In US Treasury and Agency Debt, trading volumes rose to $1.9 trillion – a new record – up 47% from 1st Quarter ’03 volume. US Treasuries volume accounted for a third of TradeWeb’s total volume for the quarter. TradeWeb’ s new Callable Agency product has gained widespread market acceptance with nearly $6 billion in securities being traded over TradeWeb during the 1st quarter.
Volume in TradeWeb TBA-MBS continued to soar, exceeding $1.7 trillion, up 65% from last year. TradeWeb TBA-MBS volume now represents about a third of TradeWeb’s global volume.
Although commercial paper issuance continued to decline, TradeWeb Money Markets share increased with total volume for CP and Discount Notes reaching $1.3 trillion for the quarter, up 11% from the fist quarter of last year.
TradeWeb European Government’s trading volume experienced tremendous growth hitting nearly $390 billion this quarter – a 55% increase over 1st Quarter ’03 and a new record.
During the first quarter, TradeWeb also added three new liquidity providers to the network: Unicredit Banca Mobiliare (UBM), WestLB and Countrywide Securities Corporation. TradeWeb also achieved a significant milestone in delivering STP to the bond markets with the addition of functionality for allocating and confirming phone-executed trades.