ICE Bonds Plans Expansion

ICE Bonds is in the process of developing two new trading components and expanding internationally after setting record trading volumes for corporate bonds, municipal bonds and agencies trading in 2024, according to a story in MarketsMedia news. The spread-based CTT is being introduced in response to strong institutional demand and builds on the success of ICE Bonds’ price-based CTT liquidity in municipal bonds and corporate bonds. Click to trade offers the opportunity to increase efficiency by automating the entire trade cycle for odd lots. A buy side trader can access additional pre-trade transparency with access to CTT liquidity pools, evaluate potential orders against executable pricing, use a rules engine to validate orders, and have orders quickly executed with straight-through -processing. In contrast, when a trader sends out an RFQ to market they have to wait for responses and may need a specific number of quotes, an ‘acceptable’ price level, or a certain counterparty to respond before execution; which is a time-intensive process for smaller odd lot trading.