Came across an analysis on India’s corporate bond market showing a noticeable jump in trading volume in 2025.
Any views on what might have driven this?
Would love to hear different perspectives
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Ads/Marketing
Thanks for sharing it here - This surprised me too when we started putting the data together.
P.S. for everyone else - I work at BondScanner.
Hi, I am currently building bondscanner.
Just to clarify from our side - this wasn’t meant as ads or marketing.
The intent was simply to share data we found interesting and start a discussion around the noticeable jump in corporate bond trading volumes in 2025. All the numbers used are from publicly available SEBI data, and the broader point was to highlight how the bond market and this asset class seem to be evolving.
Happy to discuss the trends or the data itself. And if the mods feel this doesn’t fit the forum guidelines, we’re okay taking it down.
It was an answer to the question in the title.
My bad, I thought you’re flagging this as “Ads/Marketing”.
Yes, awareness has picked up recently but that doesn’t alone justify the trading volumes. Ads and Marketing can only educate people about the asset class - fixed income products don’t really have a “FOMO” element in them that oh you saw and ad and that’s why decided to invest.
I dont think impulse investing happens in fixed income as it does in equities.
Your data lacks exact YoY numbers. But other factors include
- Poor equity performance. Nifty is flat for the year. 2020 bond peak is consistent with equity fall.
- Unlike debt mf, bond capital gains still qualifies for reduced LTCG rates
- Falling interest rate regime helps lock in interest rates with bonds and directly proportional to bond performance.
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The last fold has YoY from 2015 - we didn’t mention the numbers just to make the data more simple - will share the same in sometime with you here.
- Yes equity being muted seems to be a reason
- I don’t think the difference in the capital gains can be strong reason - liquidity in bonds is still very less
- Agreed
@MXG did they actually spike in 2025,
or did you fall for the sensationalism (whether intentional or accidental) in the linked info-graphics? 
Thanks for clarifying.
Earlier, i intended to ignore this as typical lead-gen/SEO spam.
Now, i intend to ignore it as low-effort blog-spam masquerading as research.
Here’s why…
Maybe can do a better job at it by…
-
actually sharing the underlying data / references prominently and accurately,
Assuming the source of the data is the link in the disclaimer, can maybe start by rewriting the info-graphics to call it “Indian Corporate bonds” and not “India’s Bond Market”. -
and less of sensationalizing the numbers with claims like “broke the pattern” (what pattern??) and “rewrote the year” (no it didn’t).
-
using standard chart axes/scales without trying to emphasize minor differences as major changes
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In the “Peak trading month” histogram ,
- why is 150K Cr twice the height of 100K Cr?
- or is the 0 of the Y-axis incorrectly specified?
-
missing y-axis labels in “Monthly bonds trading activity” chart
- is it also NOT starting at 0 and/or uses a non-linear scale.
- Nov = 2,58,543 trades (BTW, a major TYPO “trades” not “bonds” !)
- Jan = 1,04,871 trades
- The difference in no. of trades between Jan and Nov is ~2.5x,
not 6x that the unlabelled chart makes it look like visually.
- is it also NOT starting at 0 and/or uses a non-linear scale.
-
In the “Quarterly Performance” info-graphic
- why is 31,30% 4 times as high as 14.60%? (instead of being roughly twice as high?
- “a quarter accounted for almost one-third”
is unnecessarily exaggerating the Q2 performance (25 vs. 31?).
-
-
In the chart on “Bond Market Trading 2015-2025”
- Since it is over a significant period (10 years),
to get a good sense of the value,
is it also worthwhile to look at inflation-adjusted/indexed numbers?- of the 3x value seen in the chart,
depending on the inflation-index used,
inflation itself can account for 1.5x to 2.5x the increased value in INR.
- of the 3x value seen in the chart,
- Since it is over a significant period (10 years),
The info-graphic comes across as the result of someone who was tasked at creating an info-graphic with a pre-defined opinion (bonds are exploding!"), clutching at straws to create something noteworthy where there is nothing (or something minimal at best).
On the other hand if “India’s Bond Market” is genuinely growing fast in the recent times, the info-graphics in the link do a poor job at highlighting it due the above reasons.
Ya, right. /s
As if someone who has no clue about bonds,
who looks at the various info-graphics in the link with huge numbers (huge for an individual),
and doesn’t immediately think -
“What is this asset class with so much volume and apparently peaking right now, that i am missing out on!?”
Dozens of companies having popped-up in the recent years to capture retail-investment in debt/bonds, with several of their ads bordering on fraud by claiming to offer “fixed guaranteed returns” almost twice as typical bank fixed-deposits, with every attempt in their websites and apps to steer the user away the fine-print listing the credit-risks involved due to the guarantor.
PS: Maybe interested folks can look for actual patterns/trends and have a proper discussion based on an updated series of info-graphics with the above issues fixed?
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Fair. If you want to ignore it, ignore it.
But calling it “lead-gen/SEO spam” or “blog-spam masquerading as research” is a bit of a reach.
This wasn’t posted as a sales pitch. There’s no “buy this”, no “returns” talk, no CTA. It’s literally a “year wrapped” style summary using SEBI’s published corporate bond trading data, because most people don’t engage with raw tables unless it’s packaged visually. First attempt, yes. Perfect, no.
Thanks for taking the time to break this down properly. I genuinely appreciate it.
A couple of clarifications from my side:
-
On wording (“broke the pattern”, “rewrote the year”) - That’s editorial language. If it comes across as sensational to you, that’s fair. But it’s still only describing what’s visible in the data. It’s not meant to imply some permanent structural shift or that anyone is “missing out”.
-
On the infographics / axes / labels - Some of this feedback is fair. A couple of charts could have been cleaner in terms of axis labels and scaling so the visual matches the numbers more intuitively. Point noted. That’s something we’ll improve.
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That’s a fair suggestion as an additional lens. That said, the intent of that chart was to show reported traded value over time, not to make a real-growth or causality claim. Also, inflation doesn’t explain everything here, especially when trade counts have also stepped up, which is a separate signal altogether.
In the current form, it IS a sales pitch even if you did not want it to be.
Feel free to claim otherwise after removing the “Head to Bondscanner” CTA button at the end of the info-graphics that links to a product/service with the various “buy this”, “% returns” and “regular income” claims.
…or don’t do any of that.
Instead feel free to proudly claim that this is just “research and presenting data”
after addressing the various issues in the info graphics.
(even the unintentional ones that slipped through).
PS: Judging from the above responses, i believe that all the various shortcomings in the info-graphics that ticked me off were unintentional (Hanlon's razor - Wikipedia). IMHO, addressing them immediately might not make business sense as peers/competitors aren’t any better in this regard either. Unless you wish to use it as a key differentiator,
Some more feedback, if interested to fix or add to a pre-publish-review-checklist for future info-graphics.
OK. Please elaborate in the info-graphic -
Q1. What was the pattern that these 2 days broke?
Q2. Specifically what is it that is being referred to as “rewrote the year” without it being a something permanent or some structural shift?
OK. So, why is “reported traded value over time” relevant?
So, what can/does explain it?
For example, has the reduction in minimum lot-size/ticket-size been a significant factor?
(any correlation between when the ticket-size/minimum lot-size was reduced and the number of trades in corporate bonds over time? Some actual research anyone?)
True.
But let us not mislead (even accidentally) when attempting to present data in a visual form.
Nothing is perfect. A couple of missed nuances or issues between the actual data and the presentation is expected in any info-graphic. However, missing nuances and misleading presentation in every single chart is what led me to think of the info-graphics in the link as “blog-spam masquerading as research”.