Sell-Side Technology Awards 2025: Best sell-side trading network—MarketAxess

Overview

Since the electronification of the global capital markets, there has been a gap in efficient inter-dealer interactions, unlike the facilities for dealer-to-client interactions. This limitation inspired the development of DealerAxess. Merging the expertise of MarketAxess’ Dealer Relationship Management (DRM) team with the firm’s Open Trading all-to-all trading marketplace, it provides a personalized liquidity and execution service alongside MarketAxess’ other dealer offerings: Mid-X and Dealer RFQ (DRFQ). DealerAxess is designed to provide users with improved sell-side efficiencies and access to deeper liquidity.

The solution  

Mid-X and Dealer RFQ offer a set of protocols and services for MarketAxess’ sell-side clients to navigate diverse liquidity pools, execute trades efficiently and anonymously, and leverage real-time data for better informed execution. The DealerAxess team provides voice support for traders utilizing these protocols as a means of enhancing the trader experience. These offerings support dealers in executing their workflows so that they are best tailored to specific goals.

Secret sauce  

Offering a high-touch service, DealerAxess is customizable for each dealer’s needs. MarketAxess provides pick-up training and full-service coverage for tier-one clients that the DRM team help identify, providing instant support at the point of trading and replicating traditional marketplace communication practices. When counterparties are anonymous, clients will trade with MarketAxess. Traders can reach out bilaterally to the team to work up trades to their desired trading block size or reflect a price target to the other side of the trade confidentially.

Recent milestones

Last year, MarketAxess released DealerAxess to bridge the interdealer “gap” with interpersonal service and deeper, anonymous liquidity that cannot be accesses through inter-dealer brokers. The last 12 months have been focused on onboarding new dealers and helping them navigate their most efficient protocol selection, whether through DRFQ or Mid-X. DRFQ volumes continue to grow, with an average daily volume up 8% compared to the previous year.

Future objectives

MarketAxess’ goals are to further stimulate cleaner, clearer and more streamlined trading environments and to continue onboarding new dealers. The firm is focused on the migration of its DRFQ protocol to its next-generation trading platform, X-Pro, as well as the migration of Mid-X to Pragma technology, acquired in August 2023, specializing in quantitative algorithmic trading solutions. These migrations will further enhance the user experience and offer users advanced analytics.

Why they won

MarketAxess maintains its impressive track record of success in the Sell-Side Technology Awards by emerging on top in the best sell-side trading network category in this year’s edition, thanks to its outstanding DealerAxess offering, ably supported by a pair of additional trading services/protocols: Mid-X and DRFQ. DealerAxess was developed specifically to support the information flow around inter-dealer broker interactions with the view to improving the process by which buyers and sellers are matched. It provides users with reliable liquidity and a trade/order execution service, and is further enhanced by Mid-X and DRFQ, which when combined makes for a compelling fixed-income trading offering that has grown appreciably in the last 12 months.