Obvious statement: the state of primary markets is fluid. "Markets move" is the playful rebuttal Syndicates usually use when challenged about contradictory market commentary or new issue pricing.
For a DCM coverage officer, this makes it difficult to have a truly up to date conversation about the state of the market whilst on the road, as physical meetings with clients return.
Some might say market fluidity is well understood by issuers and conversations which are in fact a bit stale are fine. Research reports for example have to be based on slightly stale data. But standards improve all the time. These days, even on the road, you'd look foolish for raising a client's attention to news stories which are more than a few hours old. The same will happen for primary market data.
Currently, to stay on top of primary market data whilst travelling, DCM coverage officers mostly rely on phone calls or DMs and require "ground control", usually syndicate - and good luck getting their attention during execution windows.
Another problem often encountered presenting decks on the road is that issuers have an uncanny ability to wrong-foot you. You can ask your various Syndicates to price every relevant bond under the sun, a corporate treasurer will somehow find that tenor, market, feature, you haven't prepared. Imagine instead if you were able to react instantly with the latest primary market data across the board.
And another thing, Syndicate professionals travel too. From their point of view travelling equates to a backlog of pricing when they get back. That or foisting all the pricing responsibilities onto others, which isn't good for morale or output quality.
Nowadays most data and workflows can be accessed and processed via phone or ipad. However that's not quite true about the DCM workflow, yet.
Reach out to us to find out what Bots' operating platform for DCM and Syndicate can do for you on the road.
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