Goldman Sachs has begun quietly pushing a computer program that allows investors to trade in the $8.4tn US corporate bond market without ever having to communicate with a person at the investment bank.
Money managers and traders have in recent weeks received automated messages from the “Goldman Sachs Algorithm” offering prices at which to buy and sell highly rated corporate bonds. The profile of GSA, which Goldman has quietly run on some trading systems for about a year, increased last month after it was rolled it out on Bloomberg, one of the biggest Wall Street platforms.
The attempt to expand the program is part of an electronic revolution increasingly pushing out phone trading in the last holdout markets as banks are squeezed for profits.