It feels like a long time since we last had a proper bond market liquidity freakout. For anyone hankering for their fix, the International Capital Market Association is out with a new report.
Last year ICMA set up a Bond Market Liquidity Taskforce — which is probably as glamorous as it sounds. The BMLT has now published its first report, examining the health of the “core” European government bond markets, in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the UK.
Anyone who has followed this debate over the past decade will be unsurprised by ICMA’s “key findings”. Bond market liquidity has become more procyclical as banks retrenched — and is particularly and scarily flighty at times of extreme stress — so regulators should “review” their post-crisis rule books.