The Transition to Electronic Trading in the Secondary Treasury Market

This article reviews the history of the recent shift to electronic trading in equity, foreign ex- change and fixed-income markets. We analyze a new data set: the eSpeed (Cantor Fitzgerald) electronic Treasury network. We contrast the market microstructure of eSpeed with the tradi- tional voice assisted networks that report through GovPX. The electronic market (eSpeed) has greater volume, smaller spreads and a lower estimated impact of a trade than the voice market (GovPX).