Q-WIXX, an electronic platform for trading large portfolios of single- name credit default swaps (CDS), yesterday launched its automated service for the global market, with support from many market participants.
Credit derivative dealers who have joined the platform include BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch and UBS.
Q-WIXX is set up to assist dealers, correlation desks, proprietary trading desks, hedge funds and other buy-side market participants in achieving improved pricing and processing efficiencies when executing transactions known as 'offers wanted in competition' (OWICS) or 'bids wanted in competition' (BIDS). Distributed to participating bidders via a network used by more than 1000 CDS traders in the US and Europe, Q-WIXX provides clients with live prices, making it easier for them to execute trades while reducing communication and execution time, the firm says.
Through its connection to T-Zero, an electronic platform dedicated to achieving operation efficiencies in the credit derivatives market, the Q-WIXX platform provides a number of post-trade benefits, the firm says. Post-trade processing of lists is particularly cumbersome because the bulk nature of list trading currently results in high levels of operational activity, which can dramatically increase the potential for error and backlogs in trade booking, according to Q-WIXX.
"When executing large portfolios of credit derivatives, the existing process of booking transactions is manually intensive, prone to errors and delays, and is unscalable," comments Pierre Mathieu, head of European flow credit trading at BNP Paribas. "Q-WIXX provides the necessary technology infrastructure to electronically deliver straight-through-processing of credit derivatives."
"Q-WIXX list execution, combined with T-Zero post-trade processing, provides buy-side institutions including ourselves with the ideal end-to-end solution," notes Stephen Grady, global head of trading, Fortis Investments.