Information Flow and Network of Interpersonal Ties in the Fixed-Income Market

The $45 trillion fixed-income market still makes little use of the electronic marketplace. Our research findings show this to be mainly due to the market structure of embedded interpersonal ties, which allow participants to take advantage of information asymmetry for profit taking. This research-in-progress, based on ethnographic data and face-to-face interviews with 72 fixedincome senior managers and traders from 20 financial institutions, provides a unique insight into the information flow and networks of interpersonal ties in a fixed income market for market makers.