PREVIOUS
NEXT
All content Copyright 2024 Fixed Income Insights. All rights reserved.
Bond Market Structure
BondWave QMarksTM Quarterly Dashboards Q1 2025
Quarterly Dashboards Q1 2025
Scroll down

Developed to help market participants better understand trading trends in the bond markets, BondWave’s Data Lab has released its QMarksTM dashboards for the first quarter of 2025.
QMarks is a proprietary BondWave data set that powers its quarterly dashboards to cover all disseminated bond transactions using the regulatory-prescribed Prevailing Market Price methodology for corporate, municipal, agency, and 144A. QMarks belongs to a suite of other BondWave proprietary data sets, including QCurves, QTrades, and QScores.
Q1 2025
Q1 2025 Observations:
Corporate Bond Market Trends
- Corporate bond trading in Q1 2025 was very strong.
- Customer trade counts increased by 3.8% over Q4 2024, the previous highest quarter.
- Customer par traded jumped 11.1% to a new quarterly record, surpassing Q1 2024 by 5.9%.
- Mark ups, mark downs, and bid/ask spreads were unchanged.*
*During the first week of April bid/ask spreads were significantly higher.

Source: BondWave QMarks
144A Bond Market Trends
- Like registered corporate bonds, 144A bonds saw significant volume growth in Q1.
- Customer trade counts were +12.4% relative to Q4 2024.
- Customer par traded was +17.0% relative to Q4 2024.
Source: BondWave QMarks
Municipal Bond Market Trends
- After strong volumes to finish out 2024, municipal trading took a slight breather.
- Customer trade counts in Q1 2025 were -1.7% relative to Q4 2024.
- Customer par traded in Q1 2025 was -1.8% relative to Q4 2024.
- Mark ups, mark downs, and bid/ask spreads were stable.*
Source: BondWave QMarks
Agency Bond Market Trends
- Agency trading volume decreased significantly in Q1 2025.
- Customer trade counts were -27.4% relative to Q4 2024.
- Customer par traded was -13.1% relative to Q4 2024.
Source: BondWave QMarks
Previous quarter dashboards referenced above can be found using our News & Views archive search.
About BondWave LLC
Founded in 2001, BondWave is a financial technology firm specializing in fixed income solutions. We serve a wide range of users including traders, compliance professionals, and RIAs from the smallest to the largest firms in the industry who use our tools to provide a superior fixed income experience to their clients while supporting critical regulatory mandates.
Effi®, our Engine for Fixed Income, is the single platform through which we deliver all our solutions providing intuitive dashboards and insights into every fixed income position and transaction. Capabilities include portfolio analytics and reporting, custom alerts, and proposal generation, as well as tools that support best execution, fair pricing, and mark-up monitoring and disclosure on both a pre- and post-trade basis. BondWave leverages advanced technologies and data science to develop proprietary data sets that fuel our innovative solutions.
To learn more, please visit bondwave.com, email info@bondwave.com, or call 877.795.2929.