Jane Street Capital Expands into Corporate Bond Market

The high-tech trading firm known for its dominance of the exchange-traded fund market is pushing into the corporate bond market. Investment banks and brokerages are the main go-betweens for money managers looking to buy and sell corporate bonds, about $25 billion of which trade daily in the U.S.  Now, Jane Street Capital LLC, has begun offering the same service to investment firms on electronic trading platform MarketAxess and has recruited about 60 clients, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal. Founded in 2000, Jane Street is a proprietary trading firm that specializes in ETFs. The company expanded into other areas as ETFs spread from stocks to different asset classes; it now makes markets in stocks, derivatives, currencies, commodities and bonds. Jane Street has traded anonymously on MarketAxess for two years but in recent months it also became a disclosed dealer on the platform, the first such transition by a MarketAxess client. The new status allows bond investors to include Jane Street on trading requests they make to the dozens of dealers already active on the electronic venue.