March of the Bond Bots: An Invasion or Reinforcements?

Almost 300 years after a man put ink to paper and issued the first bank of England banknote, AllianceBernstein’s autonomous trading bot, Abbie, executed a corporate bond trade with another (likely less adorably named) artificial intelligence assistant at a dealer counterparty on its own authority. Entirely removed, if you will, from human intervention or instruction. The first trade of its kind.

This TABB Group Market Note examines publicly available trade data to break down recent developments with U.S. corporate bond trading and assess the current state of the electronic transformation occurring within the market.