I some corporate bonds on IBKR. Liquidity isn’t great and there’s about 10 basis points spread in bid/ask.
Anyway, I have 2 different IBKR accounts so I set a sell order on one at the midpoint of bid/ask and a corresponding buy order on the other account.
I wait. And absolutely nothing happens. Why doesn’t this execute given a buyer and seller at a matching price? I even tried increasing the sell price a bit to add a bit of margin in there, but still no dice.
First of all wash trading is illegal and secondly, most likely, the bond bid/ask are indications of interest (IOIs) rather than immediately accessible on exchange liquidity. Bond world is very different
My question is what’s the point of this transaction 
To transfer from my personal account to one held in trust for somebody else.
I see.
I think the mechanics of this trade might be flagged in backend as wash trade. Does it happen often or just this particular security?