An MSRB report analyzing trends in the customer trading activity found (i) a steady decrease in the number of dealers over the past decade and (ii) a decrease in the concentration of customer trades amongst dealers.
The report examined dealer participation and the concentration of trades with dealers based on transaction data reported to the MSRB and related descriptive data from the calendar years of 2006, 2011 and 2017. The MSRB found that the number of registered dealers and smaller dealer inventories steadily decreased over the past decade, but that municipal securities trading activity has remained relatively stable. The MSRB attributes the decline to the consolidation of broker-dealers and dealers leaving the municipal securities business, but noted that most of the decline was in dealers without "significant presence in the municipal securities market." By contrast, the number of dealers that executed a "substantial amount of business" (i.e., more than 10,000 trades) increased from 2006 to 2017.
The MSRB also found that customer trades became more widely dispersed amongst dealers and the top ten dealers held "significantly less" market share in 2017 as compared to 2006. The MSRB noted that the growth of e-trading may have been a contributor.
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