MAKING SENSE
OF MARKETS
Yann Couellan, head of fixed income execution at AXA Investment Managers
A
sset managers in France are
increasingly using sophisticated data
and aggregation tools to trade fixed
income. Yann Couellan, head of fixed
income execution at AXA Investment Managers
is leading a push to use these tools to provide
a powerful trading proposition at the fixed
income trading desk.
"Actually, we had developed a suite of tools
for fixed income, starting in 2006 from (i)
pricing tools enabling traders to follow up
each expertise from rates to high yield,(ii)
Axes tools in late 2008 to manage liquidity
challenges that we were facing, as well
as TCA benchmarking tool which enable
to demonstrate to clients the trading
performances of the Global Centralized
Trading Platform of AXA Investment
Managers, Trading & Securities Financing
Department. The Axes tool is an in-house
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application which aggregates tailored fixed
income interests sent by our counterparties
to AXA IM Fixed Income Trading team,
to address liquidity challenge and price
discovery. This application enables traders to
promptly identify which are the banks which
have obvious and firm interest on a specific
bond for a specific size in order to reduce
market impact. It helps to find the others side
for a given order."
AXA first launched its market data axis tool
in 2008 for internal use by traders and fund
managers. Back then, however, it was only
updated twice a day. Today, it is updated at
30-minute intervals. But just as importantly, it
has been integrated with other related tools –
most notably market data aggregation tools.
Normally, when a trader is seeking to buy
or sell, that trader will look at pre-trade
information.
www.buysideintel.com
June 2016