The CEO at MarketAxess has called out the firm’s competitors for inconsistent electronic trading volume reporting and is seeking consistency across the industry.
Speaking on this year’s second quarter earnings call, Rick McVey explained press releases from competitors reveal an inconsistency in reported electronic trading volumes.
“We don’t think that really helps to understand the underlying trends in those businesses, so we think it would serve the market well if reporting was done monthly across all products and in a consistent way so that you and others could better understand the trends.” he said.
An analyst then questioned McVey on Tradeweb’s trading volumes when compared to MarketAxess’, but the CEO asserted it is growing faster in the institutional credit business than its rival.
“There is no question that we are widening the lead,” he said.
“If Tradeweb wants to provide transparency, they would show a consistent and long-term trend of their retail business, which they are now commingling with institutional business in their press release.”
McVey added that despite Tradeweb’s intuitional trading volume increasing, the growth rate does not come close to MarketAxess’ growth rate year-on-year.
Lee Olesky, chief executive officer at Tradeweb, responded to McVey’s comments and told The TRADE: “We have more than 20 years of experience in delivering powerful trading solutions across fixed income markets, and we’re seeing meaningful traction in applying our technology and scalability in US credit.
“From every angle, our increasing volume and market share shows that clients are embracing Tradeweb’s flexible, comprehensive trading solutions for electronic RFQ, anonymous all-to-all, and electronic processing of block/voice trades.”
MarketAxess reported a 7% increase in total trading volume in the second quarter this year compared to the same period last year.
Average daily volume also grew 9% during the quarter, although revenues at the firm remained largely flat but increased 0.7% to $97.3 million year-on-year.