Markit, the leading provider of independent data, portfolio valuations and OTC derivatives trade processing, today announced the official launch of Markit Quotes, a real-time quote parsing service.
Designed for the buy-side, Markit Quotes extracts indicative and live prices from dealer pricing runs and converts them into real-time data, allowing portfolio managers and traders to cut through the thousands of electronic messages they receive daily to gain an immediate view of market levels. The service enables clients to see best bids and offers at a glance, and the parsed data is made available through the website, Microsoft Excel or via a feed.
Roy Bottomley, Co-Head of Structured Credit Trading at Maple Securities, commented: "Markit's quote parsing service extracts time-sensitive information from the large number of quotes that dealers send us each day. By removing the need to sift through incoming emails, Markit Quotes allows us to dedicate ourselves fully to trade ideas and is of immense value in helping us select axed counterparties pre-trade."
Unique to Markit Quotes is the display of all parsed data against Markit's clean, consensus closing curves for the broad universe of around 3,300 distinct credits. The combination of intra-day parsed data with Markit's comprehensive end-of-day service allows clients to calculate real-time P&L on all positions. This feature is particularly pertinent since dealer CDS pricing runs often only provide the five year point.
Credit default swap (CDS) prices are shown against Markit RED codes, the market standard reference entity and reference obligation identifiers used throughout the CDS market.
Chris Chesney, Managing Director at KBC Financial Products, said: "Markit Quotes has boosted our ability to gather market intelligence. It is very useful to be able to see the real-time CDS data against Markit's benchmark closing prices and RED."
Markit Quotes spans bonds, CDS, credit and structured finance indices, index tranches and loan CDS. Markit will add loans, convertible bonds and structured finance securities in the coming months.
"Markit Quotes is designed to optimis to optimise the way in which our clients manage often overwhelming amounts of incoming information. It allows them to monitor intra-day activity with ease, and goes hand-in-hand with our end-of-day pricing service for mark-to-market. We are pleased we can now offer our clients an all-encompassing service to meet their every pricing need," noted Kevin Gould, Executive Vice President and Head of Data Products and Analytics at Markit.