In bond trading a BWIC (bids wanted in competition) or 'bid list' is a list of bonds for sale that a seller would send to a number of banks with a set time for all bids to be in. As a bidder you would be notified of whether or not you won the bonds, and the what the second best price was (the cover). This would allow you to know where you were with respect to the other bidders.
Except back in the old days (pre-crisis) there was no way to keep people honest, and people would routinely lie about the cover and always tell everyone the cover was just a tick below the winning bid, so if someone made an egregiously bad bid, hopefully they'd never realize...
Now all transaction get printed on the TRACE feed, which is probably better for the market.
Reminds me of house buying. Realtors are experts at getting bids and creating a high stakes competition with 0 transparency or accountability. They can easily lie or mislead people (and a lot of them do).
Except back in the old days (pre-crisis) there was no way to keep people honest, and people would routinely lie about the cover and always tell everyone the cover was just a tick below the winning bid, so if someone made an egregiously bad bid, hopefully they'd never realize...
Now all transaction get printed on the TRACE feed, which is probably better for the market.