Buy-side Perspectives Issue 13 | Page 14

A BUY-SIDE TRADER AT HEART, PLACED IN THE DRIVING SEAT OF EVOLUTION Christophe Roupie Head of Europe and Asia, MarketAxess and Trax K&K Global Consulting Ltd. met with Christophe Roupie on 23rd May 2018 to hear about his journey over the past year at MarketAxess. This is his story: 2018 thus far… Open Trading and the growth of all-to-all liquidity is set to continue T he adoption of all-to-all trading has certainly been an evolution to the traditional way buy-side traders execute orders. It does challenge the more established workflow when it comes to price formation on one hand, and the provision of liquidity on the other. The discussion on alternative pools of liquidity at the Alpha Trader Forum France in Paris on the 15th of May was refreshing and quite revealing. 14 Buy side trading desks are starting to embrace the many benefits of all-to-all trading. With the quality of pre-trade price information that is available on MarketAxess, traders are starting to be increasingly confident in using all-to-all trading protocols, including Market Lists and Private Axes for block trading. I particularly enjoyed the discussion between our existing Open Trading buy-side users and their peers on the positive impacts of having a diversified and alternative source of liquidity. The risk appetite of banks has www.buysideintel.com reduced dramatically over the years as balance sheet constraints and capital requirements continue to impact dealers’ ability to provide liquidity. The alternative route, which is to have a more direct and broader access to institutional participants’ inventory through our all-to-all network, is a transformative evolution. With more than 1300 institutions and thousands of end-users linked on to MarketAxess on a daily basis, this network is an alternative pool of liquidity which never existed before. Summer 2018