Online Trading, All the Time

Alliance Bernstein is committing to doing all of its trading online by the end of the year, and Blackrock is supportive of the same goal. This is the takeaway from the recent SEC Fixed Income Market Structure Advisory Committee inaugural meeting last week.

The declaration seems to be a recognition that there is value to be added. There is value to be added in aggregating disparate data into a single liquidity or information pool. There is also value to be added by applying analytics–“artificial intelligence” tools, if you will–to that single pool. As the articles state, it is impossible for 4 traders on a desk to properly analyze and extract information from literally millions of messages and data points every day.

So, the long-foreseen future finally is coming to bond trading. Even phone trades won’t be “just” phone trades, but will be captured into the pool of information in real time.

This is the vision of the advisory committee: All Online, All the Time. It’s about time.