MarketAxess Holdings announces launch of MKTX 400 Index

By Edlyn Cardoza

MarketAxess Holdings Inc., an operator of a leading electronic trading platform for fixed-income securities, and the provider of market data and post-trade services for the global fixed-income markets, recently announced the launch of the MKTX U.S. Investment Grade 400 Corporate Bond Index (MKTX 400 Index). The launch of MarketAxess’ first tradable index underscores the company’s long-term commitment to creating innovative and actionable data solutions in the fixed income market.

The MKTX 400 Index, administered by MarketAxess Technologies Inc., tracks the performance of 400 U.S. dollar-denominated investment-grade corporate bonds with higher-than-average liquidity relative to the broader U.S. corporate bond market. The Index combines actionable liquidity with broad market exposure, powered by MarketAxess’ proprietary liquidity and pricing data – Relative Liquidity Score and Composite+™ pricing engine.

Chris Concannon, President and Chief Operating Officer at MarketAxess, commented, “MarketAxess has a unique view into the traditionally fragmented and less liquid fixed income market. We are leveraging our proprietary data sources to construct an index with improved liquidity, transparency and a high availability of the constituent bonds.”  

MarketAxess’ data capabilities support real-time pricing, liquidity assessment and valuation, allowing greater transparency and tradability in index products. The application of tradable and liquid indices extends beyond ETFs to enhance portfolio functions, such as tactical adjustments, optimizing cash positions, rebalancing, diversification, streamlined create/redeem processes, building block portfolios, and acting as substitutes for CDX or TRS vehicles.   

Kat Sweeney, Head of Index and ETF Solutions at MarketAxess, added, “We’ve seen in our data how index products like ETFs are transforming the bond market, and we believe they will be an increasingly important driver of the market. Our MKTX 400 Index prioritizes tradability and liquidity. By defining the eligible bond universe by liquidity factors, we can help reduce the cost of implementation, increase two-sided market participation and improve transparency, without deviating from traditional market performance measures.”