MarketAxess Volume Explodes: 44% Daily Trading Surge Defies Sluggish Bond Market

Wall Street's electronic bond-trading darling just flexed - hard. MarketAxess posts a staggering 44% leap in average daily volume, leaving traditional dealers scrambling to justify their bloated commissions.

The fixed-income disruptor keeps eating Wall Street's lunch while bankers still charge clients for faxed price quotes. Some things never change - except trading volumes, apparently.

MarketAxess Holdings, the operator of a leading electronic trading platform for fixed-income securities, announced trading volume and preliminary variable transaction fees per million (“FPM”) for May 2025.1

• The MarketAxess platform’s strong performance persisted in May through moderated levels of volatility, providing our clients with deep liquidity through Open Trading.
• We delivered strong progress with our new initiatives across theclient-initiated, portfolio trading and dealer-initiated channels that contributed to the strong performance in May.

• Strong increases in block trading ADV across U.S. credit (+41%), emerging markets (+24%) and eurobonds (+116%). We launched our targeted block trading solution in U.S. credit in mid-May.
  • Block trading in emerging markets and eurobonds both benefitted from the launch of our targeted block solution in late 2024, which has generated cumulative trading volume of approximately $1.7 billion and $2.7 billion, respectively, since launch.
• Clients continued to leverage our algos in U.S. government bond trading, helping to drive a 57% increase in ADV to $28.3 billion with estimated market share of 2.6% in May.

• Year-to-date May 2025, estimated market share of U.S. credit portfolio trading is 18.6%, compared to 14.1% in the prior year same period, an increase of approximately 450 basis points.2
  • 90% of all portfolio trading ADV was executed over X-Pro in May.

• Dealer-initiated ADV increased 41% to $1.8 billion.

• The decline in total credit FPM compared to the prior year was driven principally by protocol mix. Total credit FPM was flat month-over-month.
• The decline in total rates FPM compared to the prior year was driven by the impact of product mix. Total rates FPM was down slightly month-over-month.

*All comparisons versus May 2024 unless noted.

The full figures can be read here 

Source: MarketAxess