BlackRock’s Aladdin risk-management system, a software tool that can track and analyze trading, monitors a whopping $18 trillion in assets for 200 financial firms; even the Federal Reserve and European central banks use it. This tremendous financial base has made BlackRock something of a Swiss Army knife—institutional investor, money manager, private equity firm, and global government partner rolled into one.

Credit traders at some of the world’s largest banks are convinced hedge funds and brokers have penetrated their members-only club. The claim — based on interviews with more than 16 bankers, including seven who head trading desks — is that rivals and even clients are now accessing information from trading platforms that have long been the exclusive domain of the banks.

How can officials from the Federal Reserve to the Bank of Japan even pretend to know how to reverse what they’ve done over the past decade? I’m speaking specifically about propping up financial markets with easy money and allowing the world’s debt burden to balloon to almost $250 trillion.

ETFs edged out credit-default swaps — at the single-name and index level — and were second only to corporate bonds themselves as a way for professionals to access fixed income.

One platform, run by financial software provider Ipreo, is thriving in Europe. But reticence to work with rivals and power struggles have so far stifled change in the US. Faced with the prospect of inevitable disruption, three of the largest US banks – Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and JP Morgan – are giving the idea another go.

Many pension funds, after diving in big time, may be ready to get out of the pool temporarily — or at least slow fixed income investments as summer moves into fall. That’s because when the tax law changed last year, many companies were given until mid-September to deduct their pension contributions at last year’s tax rate instead of the new 21 percent rate.

“Banks have the potential to generate tens of millions, maybe even hundreds of millions, if they sell their gems,” says Tammer Kamel, founder and chief of Quandl, a platform for alternative data.

The Bank of America survey found that evaporating liquidity was the main worry for 22 percent of high-grade bond investors and 20 percent of investors in junk debt. In June, bubbles were the primary concern for 18 percent and 30 percent, respectively.

The new platform will connect to BondPoint, the electronic corporate bond trading platform ICE bought from Virtu Financial for $400 million in January, and TMC Bonds, the municipal bond trading platform it acquired for $685 million last month, as well as to third party venues, ICE said.

PMS. OMS, EMS, venues, dealers and brokers present a swirling pool of moving parts that somehow make up a dizzying array of possible permutations for the ultimate execution tech stack. Indeed this has reached the point now where there is a nomadic tribe of consultants dipping in and out of vendor presentations at client sites, struggling to maintain a demeanour of alertness as a vendor demo heads into its’ third hour.