Since TradeWeb launched as a multibank fixed-income trading platform in January 1998, it has gradually become an important part of banks’ execution strategy. Now it is becoming just as significant in money markets and deposits.
In addition to other fixed-income products, users have been able to trade US commercial paper since August 2001, and in February 2003 TradeWeb expanded its money markets suite to include Eurocommercial paper. It also added agency discount notes in October 2002.
The introduction of commingled pricing and trading on TradeWeb’s US CP trading site has made a considerable impact on the US CP market, which accounts for around $1.3 trillion in outstanding debt. TradeWeb hopes to have the same impact on the ECP market, which is fragmented and much smaller, with an estimated size of $400 billion.
The dealers using TradeWeb send their prices to the site, which operates as a multi-dealer inventory trading system. There are seven dealers for the ECP product, with three more expected to join shortly, and eight dealers for agency discount notes.
Users can search for the paper they are interested in by a range of parameters. Once clients have located the paper they want to trade all they need to do is click on it to bring up a trade ticket.