The increasing frequency of liquidity problems in repo markets – very obvious in the March 2020 sell-off – have been exacerbated by a low adoption of electronic trading and regulatory limits on bank balance sheets. However, over the past year e-trading of repo has boomed, says Erica Barrett, managing director of institutional rates at Tradeweb.
As buy- and sell-side firms have adopted e-trading market operators are forming hubs that bring multiple liquidity providers together, despite the challenges of hooking up the unique workflows that trading desks often use.