Economics
Traders Sidelined Robots and Picked Up Phones When Treasury Volume Surged
- Manual trading flourished amid chaos in March, Greenwich finds
- ‘Natural reaction is to pick up the phone,’ senior trader says
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Panic over the pandemic and stricken U.S. economy catapulted trading in the world’s largest bond market to a record high last month, with much of Wall Street switching off their robots and picking up the phones to get deals done.
For the first time ever, average daily volume in U.S. Treasuries surpassed $1 trillion in the first week of March, according to research firm Greenwich Associates LLC. That beat the previous all-time high of $886 billion when the U.S. lost its triple-A credit rating at S&P in 2011. The panic stirred by the pandemic and U.S. economic shutdown brought historic lows and unprecedented oscillations in long-end Treasury yields, and a surge in volatility not seen since 2009.