This Week: MSCI, Tradeweb, FactSet, LTX, MarketAxess, TS Imagine, and more

MSCI debuts macro finance risk tool in MSCI One

Index and analytics provider MSCI last week unveiled a new Macro Finance Analyzer tool, available via its MSCI One cloud-based technology platform, which uses the vendor’s modeling and stress-testing capabilities to assess risk and expected returns based on macroeconomic events.

The tool allows users to evaluate macroeconomic scenarios and events, such as interest rate adjustments, changes in long-term economic growth, or even regime changes, and assess their exposure to these, as well as what the impact on their portfolio’s anticipated returns would be.

Initially aimed at risk and asset allocation professionals making long-term strategic or short-term tactical allocation decisions, officials say they are seeing broader interest from investment professionals across the board.

“Many people want to answer the same question: How does a macro event impact my portfolio?” says Jorge Mina, head of analytics at MSCI.

Macro Finance Analyzer supports multiple asset classes, as well as publicly listed and privately held companies, which all use a common taxonomy so that the impacts of macro changes can be applied to all types of asset and asset classes within a portfolio.

By aligning risk with performance and providing the same tool to risk managers and front-office staff, Macro Finance Analyzer will also allow risk professionals to have greater and more valuable insight into investment workflows beyond compliance, officials say.

Tradeweb adds analytics to credit RFQs

Fixed-income marketplace operator Tradeweb bas launched an enhanced request-for-quote functionality for US credit markets, dubbed RFQ Edge, which combines portfolio trading analytics with its RFQ protocol to deliver better list trading capabilities for credit and ETF traders.

RFQ Edge provides real-time trading data and analytics, customized charting and dealer performance breakdowns, along with Tradeweb AI-Price—which provides real-time prices for around 30,000 corporate bonds—to deliver greater transparency to support better trade decisions.

Officials say this will reveal “deeper insights at the list level” and provide clients with “unparalleled” precision throughout the RFQ process.

FactSet bundles AI-focused toolkit

FactSet has announced a suite of solutions to help technologists and developers build and accelerate AI projects and respond more quickly to demand for AI technologies.

The suite includes FactSet’s GenAI Data Package, which comprises APIs for historical structured and unstructured content, such as prices, news, estimates, fundamentals, estimates, transcripts and filings; its Conversational API, powered by its FactSet Mercury LLM-based chat interface, which provides access to data and can be queries programatically; and an AI Partner Program, offering access to an expanded landscape of third-party AI technologies.

Officials say these will drive better and faster decisions, elevate research workflows, and increase productivity and automation, such as creating pitchbooks and client documents, and generating performance attribution reports.

LTX introduces GenAI trading tools

Broadridge-backed corporate bond trading platform LTX has rolled out GenAI-powered list trading functionality, enabling participants to use GPT technology to generate and execute multi-asset class and multi-directional trade lists at once via the RFQ+ trading protocol.

Officials say the capability responds to clients’ ongoing needs to streamline workflows as they seek to integrate GenAI into pre-trade and execution processes.

MarketAxess launches list trading for tax-exempt muni bonds

Electronic fixed-income trading platform MarketAxess has gone live with a new tool, Portfolio Trading for Tax Exempt Munis, which allows clients to send lists of up to 1,500 tax-exempt municipal bonds to multiple or single counterparties, negotiate price improvements in a single point of transaction.

Clients can choose to load portfolio trades manually or via their OMS. Then, they can view changes in portfolio metrics, impacts on the portfolio’s market value, counter or remove line items during negotiation for optimal execution, and make decisions about portfolio composition and pricing.

EquiLend partners with valid8Me to speed onboarding and increase liquidity

Securities finance platform operator EquiLend has partnered with client onboarding technology provider valid8Me to roll out the Onboard+ platform, an AI-powered platform for reducing the time and manual processing burden associated with onboarding beneficial owners of securities who want to participate in securities lending. Officials say the inability to cost-effectively onboard beneficial owners is leaving trillions of dollars in liquidity untapped by the securities lending markets. Easier onboarding of more beneficial owners will increase liquidity and will benefit lenders and borrowers alike, officials say

TS Imagine integrates BondDroid pricing

Trading systems vendor TS Imagine has made 7 Chord’s BondDroid AI pricing and analysis tool available within its TradeSmart fixed-income EMS, allowing TradeSmart clients to access BondDroid’s streaming prices and analytics before and after US market hours. BondDroid uses real-time continuous learning technology to generate prices and analytics for thinly traded securities. Officials say the tool delivers ever-increasing accuracy and relevance because it does not need to be taken offline for periodic retraining.

BSE OKs Ion’s Fidessa for trading

Trading, analytics and risk technology provider Ion has received certification for its Fidessa trading platform to trade cash equities on BSE (formerly the Bombay Stock Exchange), following a compliance audit.

Officials say that the majority of top Indian brokers already use the Fidessa platform for trading or connectivity to equities markets outside India, and can now use the same platform to trade domestically on BSE.

DTCC, Cboe Europe ally for equities clearing workflow

Clearing and settlement organizations DTCC and Cboe Clear Europe have announced they are working together to create more efficient settlement processes for OTC cash equities in the UK and Europe, allowing Cboe Clear Europe to net OTC cash trades against on-exchange trades for settlement.

The organizations will develop a proof-of-concept that links DTCC’s CTM tri-party trade matching workflow with Cboe Clear Europe. This will provide prime brokers with a golden copy of trade details when matched between a hedge fund and executing broker via CTM. CTM then sends matched trades to the CCP. Officials say this will deliver “significant efficiencies” and reduce operational and settlement risks.

BMLL, Inqdata partner for faster historical data analysis

Historical data and analytics provider BMLL has partnered with cloud-based market data management platform Inqdatata to deliver BMLL’s historical data into firms’ kdb+ tick data analytics environment. Officials say the move will lower the infrastructure cost and remove the need for extra data science resources.

The partnership combines BMLL’s data collection, cleansing, curation and analytics with Inqdata’s data ingestion, storage, management and distribution, allowing data scientists, application developers and other users to access and explore granular historical market data and analytics, accelerating their speed to insights and enabling them to optimize trading strategies and test new markets, faster.