FYI: Peter Chalif traces his early days at Citigroup Inc. to a time when trading a large basket of bonds involved hours of work with pen and paper. Now he’s running a team that can accomplish the same feat in seconds.
Chalif credits much of the change to technology-enabled portfolio trading, which is bringing the same blazing speeds to the bond market that stock traders take for granted. Banks are hoping the strategy will help them grab a bigger slice of a shrinking fixed-income pie even as it bites into the industry’s profit margins.
Wall Street’s bond desks have executed at least $88 billion such trades this year, according to an analysis by Morgan Stanley. That’s compared with virtually none two years ago. At Citigroup, the bank says it’s handled multiple portfolio trades topping $1 billion since debuting the technology this year, and it regularly trades blocks of bonds in the range of $200 million to $500 million.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/the-bond-trade-that-s-gone-from-zero-to--88-billion-in-two-years-52799.html?print
