OpenDoor Securities, an all-to-all trading platform for illiquid fixed income products, has seen a pick-up in buy-side traders using the platform, according to its founder and chief executive.
OpenDoor Securities went live in April in a bid to bring traders to the less liquid segments of the US Treasury market, including off-the-run Treasuries and Treasury Inflation Protected Securities.
Since its launch it has attracted over $60 billion in orders, with a wide variety of buy-side firms accessing the platform.
“We launched on April 25th with a broad base of end-users willing to be first movers, including sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, mutual funds, hedge funds, dealers acting for their principal trading desk and a foreign central bank,” said Susan Estes, CEO and founder, OpenDoor Securities.
“Buy-side matched with buy-side; both acted as aggressors and were matched prices more favourable to both; each faced a different sponsor-dealer for clearing and the dealers received riskless principal revenue from OpenDoor. Having a trifecta on the first trade was not expected, but it was a tremendous proof of concept for the platform.”
Estes, the former global head of Treasury trading at both Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank, also announced the platform had received a $10 million Series A investment round from private investors.
With banks’ having less capacity to house securities on their balance sheets, off-the-run Treasuries have become more difficult to trade.
Speaking to The TRADE Derivatives Supurna VedBrat, head of global trading for BlackRock, said both banks and the buy-side should look to cooperate to bring liquidity back to these markets, with all-to-all trading as a potential solution.
“In certain markets that are liquidity constrained, the buy-side and sell-side should work together to create pools of liquidity and all-to-all trading capabilities,” she said.
Tradeweb Europe recently announced it will introduce all-to-all trading on its credit platform in the second half of this year in a bid to attract asset managers as liquidity providers.