At the sharp end

摘要

With their boozy client dinners, big bonuses and foul-mouthed traders, interdealer brokers are stalwarts of a financial order that is in retreat. As their name suggests, they exist to broker trades between wholesale-market participants, most of which are banks, and they deal in everything from Treasury bonds to over-the-counter (otc) derivatives. The brokers serve a number of purposes. For otc derivatives, for example, liquidity is episodic. Interdealer brokers perform a price-discovery function, helping banks get a clearer picture of where the instruments are trading.