FIX Protocol Issues Guidelines for Electronic Bond Trading
The Financial Information eXchange (FIX) Protocol, the non-profit industry standards organisation for the global electronic trading (e-trading) community has published recommended best practices and accompanying implementation guidelines for the e-trading of bonds, which it said will enable bond market participants to benefit from cost effective and efficient connectivity to the increasing number of bond trading platforms in the US and European markets.
The organisation commented that regulatory efforts to increase capital requirements and enhance transparency, in this traditionally voice traded asset class, have led to market structure changes, creating an increasingly automated and venue-driven trading environment. The best practices and implementation guidelines provide recommendations to both existing and emerging venues, broker-dealers and market makers on how they can use the FIX Protocol to support their platforms.
The new guidelines complement recommendations released in 2012 to support the trading of credit default swaps (CDS) and interest rate swaps (IRS), which are currently being implemented by a number of swap execution facilities (SEFs). They were devised by market participants keen to encourage the adoption of standards by fixed income trading venues.
The recommendations explain how FIX can be implemented in a consistent manner to lower implementation costs and deliver maximum industry-wide benefit, including recommendations for how FIX can be used to support fixed income trading on:
“This initiative is expected to play a significant role in the evolution of bond trading,” said Sassan Danesh, a managing partner of ETrading Software. “In recent years this market has witnessed massive change and as it becomes increasingly electronic encouraging the use of FIX will be vital to its success. FIX adoption will ensure that an efficient trading environment is created, within which innovation and competition can flourish.”