Information Flow and Network of Interpersonal Ties in the Fixed-Income Market

The $45 trillion fixed-income market still makes little use of the electronic marketplace. Our research findings show this to be mainly due to the market structure of embedded interpersonal ties, which allow participants to take advantage of information asymmetry for profit taking. This research-in-progress, based on ethnographic data and face-to-face interviews with 72 fixed- income senior managers and traders from 20 financial institutions, provides a unique insight into the information flow and networks of interpersonal ties in a fixed income market for market makers

The Impact of Structural Embeddedness on Perceived Trust on Alternative Trading Systems, Trading Cost, and Access to Information in the Fixed-Income Market

The fixed income (FI) market is a financial market where debt securities are traded commonly in the form of bonds. Unlike equity securities which are traded on exchanges, the debt securities are primarily traded in over-the-counter (OTC) markets. While the use of electronic trading systems in the fixed income market is growing, the majority of the FI market is still driven by broker-dealer relationships with traders heavily relying on the phone-based communication for their trading. The concept of embeddedness has been used in several studies to explain the economic behavior and emergence of social relations in organizations. This research-in-progress is guided by these questions: What is the extent of embeddedness in the fixed income market? What is the relationship between a financial institution’s embeddedness and its trading cost and access to privileged information? What is the impact of a financial institution’s embeddedness on its perceived trust on alternative trading systems and the telephone system