How is portfolio trading changing the fixed income landscape?

Overview

This episode of the Market Dialogues podcast features Anna Han, Senior Securities Algorithmic Trader at Wells Fargo, and Shahaan Kazi, Head of US Credit – Electronic Trading Solutions at Bloomberg in conversation with David Krein, Head of Real-Time Pricing Research at Bloomberg. 

The discussion explores the rise of portfolio trading as a tool for accessing liquidity. It examines how this approach compares to others, such as basket trading and Requests for Quotation (RFQs), and how investors are leveraging it across asset classes. 

Source: Pricing & Valuations Summit, May 7, 2025, New York

About the series

The Market Dialogues podcast series provides access to curated, thought-provoking discussions from Bloomberg global events. It offers in-depth insights from experts on key trends and themes driving the markets today and beyond. 

Discover more conversations in the Market Dialogues series here. 

In focus 

Featured insights from this episode of Market Dialogues: 

On the rising volumes of portfolio trading  

David Krein: Portfolio trading is possibly the most significant innovation in electronic trading in the last five years or so. Its growth has been fairly significant. In fact, I just published a blog piece on portfolio trading activity [looking at] March of this year. In March, we saw about 25% of U.S. investment grade activity, [specifically] institutionally sized risk trades, executed via portfolio trading. That’s up from just over 20% in January. So, the growth continues to move ahead quickly in this space.* 

On what’s driving portfolio trading’s rise 

Anna Han: It really comes down to cost and convenience for our clients. When you have a whole slate to [execute], why not package it together, especially if it is something that needs to get all done at once, rather than spray to the Street an individual RFQs or individual requests without being sure if you are able to trade them all in one go. Oftentimes, you have this need where [order] needs to be all fill or kill. This kind of portfolio is very well suited for that. On the other hand, the cost aspect here is that if you have a package, sometimes it could be biased towards one part of the market, but other times it can be… more neutral and, I’d say, “friendly” to price. 

Shahaan Kazi: Portfolio trading allows you to package a list of bonds and get full execution... So when you’re going to the month-end and looking to rebalance your portfolios, or trying to do asset allocation, you’re not scrambling for hundreds of bonds to get liquidity for them. You’re actually getting full liquidity on one single execution of the trade. I think a lot of efficiency is driving [the growth in portfolio trading popularity], but… the rise in passive strategies, especially ETFs…are really driving the growth…[given] the ability to have that all in an execution in one single trade. 

*Quotations have been edited for brevity and clarity.