(Flickr, CC / Hugo90) Picture this: You're trying to buy a used car, and you're having difficulty. There are many, many more cars out there now than there were a few years ago. The old go-to used-car dealers have smaller lots and less inventory, and they have been replaced by online dealerships. But it's a hassle to compare all of those at once. That's pretty much the position bond investors find themselves in right now. The bond market has exploded in size, and yet market-makers — firms charged with making sure buyers and sellers can get the trades they need — are holding fewer bonds on their balance sheet, which makes life difficult for investors looking to make big trades. A bunch of electronic platforms have popped up to make up for this, but they're all over the map. AllianceBernstein, the asset manager that oversees $487 billion, has a solution to all this chaos. The system is called ALFA, which stands for Automated Liquidity Filtering and Analytics, and it pulls all the various platforms together into one place — giving the firm a real-time view of the entire bond market. According to investors and traders, this is the smartest tool out there. And AllianceBernstein is now showing off the system to other investors and looking at commercializing it. "The credit trading desk at AllianceBernstein is consistently on the cutting edge," Amar Kuchinad, CEO of the bond-trading platform Electronifie, told Business Insider. (A farmer on a dried-up pond on the outskirts of Baokang in central China's Hubei province.Reuters/Stringer (CHINA)) ALFA takes in data from the slew of trading venues that have popped up, such as TruMid, Electronifie, and Liquidnet, as well as legacy players like MarketAxess. It is also plugged in to Project Neptune and is about to connect with Tradeweb to receive data on dealer inventory. The firm started developing ALFA last June, and it rolled it out in October. It now works across investment grade, high yield, emerging market, and municipal debt and structured credit. It is also built to be flexible. Electronifie recently rolled out an auction-based trading mechanism, and the ALFA system now alerts AllianceBernstein traders whenever an auction takes place. "It puts all that information at your fingertips, so you can make an informed decision," Tim Morbelli, vice president of credit trading at AllianceBernstein, told Business Insider. "All these different venues are trying to solve that issue of liquidity, but liquidity doesn't necessarily make you more efficient. Efficiency can help generate more liquidity, however." There is also a wider shift at play here. More sophisticated technology is allowing firms like AllianceBernstein to become a price maker, rather than just a price taker. Investor used to have to rely on dealers to set the price of a bond. Now they can let the market know what they are willing to buy and sell at through all-to-all trading platforms that welcome all market participants as traders.(Reuters/Mario Anzuoni) This is happening across the investment universe; according to research from Greenwich Associates, almost one-third of investors either are making or are planning to make prices in the next 12 months. "There has certainly been a lot of talk about the role of buy-side participants in the fixed-income market, but that conversation stops and starts with their trading technology," Chris White, the founder of the consulting firm ViableMkts, told Business Insider. Story continues "In order to be a price maker, it requires technology that many buy-side firms don't have yet," he continued, adding that AllianceBernstein was "taking the necessary innovative steps to follow through on that price-making goal." That approach has had a real impact on trading costs. Analysis has shown that all-to-all trading delivers better pricing than trades placed with dealers, according to Morbelli, with AllianceBernstein saving 4.5 basis points on average on the bid-offer spread, or the spread between where buyers are willing to buy (bid) and the price at which sellers are willing to sell (ask). It adds up. Now AllianceBernstein is showing the ALFA system off to other investors. "We think the next step is to get it on a web-based application," Morbelli said. "We're also looking at having a JV with another firm, and having them build it out and push it. This will prove it is an independent system." The fund manager has a "competitive advantage right now" thanks to the ALFA system, according to Morbelli, so why not keep it under lock and key? Because AllianceBernstein, like everyone else, is tired of hearing about tough trading conditions. "If everyone has one of these, great, then we can focus on investing," Morbelli said. NOW WATCH: 5 of the most successful 'Shark Tank' stories of all time More From Business Insider
AllianceBernstein has developed Automated Liquidity Filtering and Analytics (ALFA), a system that consolidates data from digital fixed income marketplaces to give a real-time view of the entire bond market. ALFA is designed to bring transparency to the multitude of electronic fixed income platforms that have emerged over the past few years and according to investors and traders is the smartest tool in the space. After rolling out internally last October the asset manager is now demonstrating the system to other investors, and looking into the possibility of a joint venture with a partner that can develop the technology further and sell it to other asset managers.