MarketAxess extends emerging and frontier markets liquidity

By Edlyn Cardoza

MarketAxess Holdings Inc., the operator of a leading electronic trading platform for fixed-income securities and the provider of market data and post-trade services for the global fixed-income markets, announced that it has added Egypt (EGP), Hong Kong (HKD) and Serbia (RSD) to its EM local markets offering.  

Local currency trading, which also includes onshore Chinese debt (CNY), has grown to over $147 billion year-to-date, up 20% on the same period in the prior year. The number of active participants trading Emerging Markets debt across the MarketAxess platform also reached a record of over 1,300 firms in the third quarter.  

Kevin McPherson, Global Head of Sales at MarketAxess, noted, “Investors are increasing their exposure to emerging markets, including frontier markets, in the face of increased demand for yield, broader index inclusion and easing of pandemic-linked monetary policy. Our volume growth through the first three quarters of this year is testament to that, and to the success of the unique all-to-all EM trading ecosystem that we have built to support them.” 

Local markets across Latin America have been particularly active on the MarketAxess platform. With a record $33.5 billion traded in the first three quarters of 2021, Mexico is the largest emerging market traded on MarketAxess. Brazil is the second-largest emerging market traded on MarketAxess, with $21.1 billion traded in the same period. Within Latin America, MarketAxess supports local debt trading in Argentina (ARS), Brazil (BRL), Chile (CLP), Colombia (COP), the Dominican Republic (DOP), Mexico (MXN and MXV), Peru (PEN) and Uruguay (UYU).   

Maria E. Calderon, Head of Sales for Latin America, added, “MarketAxess has broadened the liquidity pool and helped to improve execution efficiency by delivering a range of protocols and tools designed specifically for how emerging markets debt is traded. Request-for-Market (RFM), Switch Trading and now EM Portfolio Trading have all seen rapid and significant adoption across both hard and local currency debt. These and other innovations have helped to deliver unique cost-saving and alpha-generation opportunities for our EM clients.” 

Alongside these developments, MarketAxess has also extended its commitment to Emerging Markets communities through a partnership with EMpower, a charitable foundation whose work is dedicated to helping marginalized young people in emerging market countries to transform their lives. Since the partnership began in 2017, contributions from MarketAxess are supporting communities in 15 EM countries and is helping EMpower further support hundreds of charities and community projects.