What Does "Transparency" Mean for SQX?

When no direct pricing data is available, we generally provide evaluated prices by either using a historical quote of the municipal bond, or finding a “peer bond” that is similar to the desired bond in terms of duration, status, and issuer. When there is no available market data and no appropriate peer, we take the current credit rating and sector to find the most accurate yield curve (gleaned from MBIS data) for the bond. At every step of the process, our customers will know exactly what information they are receiving from us, and they will know what process SQX used to arrive at the evaluation. We will be completely transparent at every stage.

Alternative Asset Pricing Transparency

If you’ve come to SQX to find pricing on alternative assets, we are equally transparent, disclosing the information that you’ll need to be fully informed. For instance, we will give our customers the source of the information we use. If we found the info in a document, we’ll share it with you. If we found it on a webpage, we’ll pass along the link. Even if we received the information from an email, we’ll share our records of the email and the date of information. Regardless of the source, SQX always keeps a meticulous audit trail to guard against any potential price challenges.

Additionally, SQX will disclose the dates associated with the information we receive. This means that we share not only the source’s date, but the date we found the source. We will never disguise an old price as a new one, and we will always tell our customers everything that we know about the age of their data. Partners of SQX can be confident that they will be set up with the most information possible.

Broker-Quoted Securities Pricing Transparency

For broker-quoted securities, SQX continues to be fully transparent. No matter the security, we will disclose the details of the source. We will tell you the details of the broker’s relationship to the issuer, whether underwriter, agent, or otherwise. We also keep a robust audit trail for broker-quoted securities, holding on to records of who sent us information, what company that person is from, what information they sent, and what day they sent it on. Needless to say, we make sure that our clients are fully aware of what’s going on.

We are especially careful to ensure that customers know the date of our source’s information. At SQX, we never try to pass off an old price as a new one. If there is no price available for a given date, and we have to use older information, we will not put a new date on an old price. At SQX, we do not play games behind our customer’s backs. On the contrary—if a price is old, we’ll say so! If you’ve partnered with SQX, you always can trust us to be fully transparent about the quality of the information we provide.

Corporate Bond Pricing Transparency

SQX also demonstrates meaningful transparency for corporate bonds. Though our corporate bond pricing algorithm is proprietary, we publish an in-depth white paper on our methodology, so customers can see how we arrive at the final price. As our white paper explains, “We probably have the most robust and accurate methodology for pricing derivatives and callable bonds. In order to price callable bonds when the bond price is close to the call price, a very extensive analysis of the value of the call needs to be performed; matrix pricing can have a significant pricing error for callable securities.” We never leave our customers in the dark, but help them make informed decisions.

Accessible Support Team

No matter what type of data you seek to find from SQX, you can count on receiving stellar customer service. Everyone knows the struggle of reaching out to a corporation for help, and having to wade through miles of red tape, enduring delay after delay. Not at SQX. No matter what, we guarantee you’ll hear back from us within one business day. We are always approachable, friendly, and easy to reach—regardless of what you want to discuss. How’s that for a breath of fresh air?

When you come to SQX, you can be confident that you will always be fully informed about the details and quality of the information you receive. That’s the kind of transparency you can count on.