This section explores investment-related sites on the Internet. Each issue highlights an area that may be of interest
to Computerized Investing readers. We welcome referrals to sites you have discovered.
Bond
Resources
The Federal Reserve has been
making headlines recently, especially
regarding speculation as to when the
institution may finally decide to start
raising interest rates. In December of
2008, when the market was in freefall, the Federal Reserve cut interest
rates to near 0%, a rate at which it
has stayed. It is hard to believe that
was almost five years ago; at some
point in time, rates are certain to
start going up.
While the stock market has done
well since March of 2009, a well-balanced portfolio needs an allocation
to bonds or fixed income, especially
for investors at or nearing retirement.
With our economy inching forward,
interest rates may increase sooner
rather than later, making it a perfect
FINRA Bond Screener
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time to present some websites where
you can find information on bonds.
FINRA Bonds
www.finra.org/investors
FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) is the largest independent regulator of securities firms in
the United States. The Bond section
of the FINRA website, found on the
Investors page under Market Data,
includes general bond market information such as news, benchmark
yields, and corporate bond market
activity. Additionally, the bond page
provides performance and descriptive
data on U.S. Treasury, agency, corporate and municipal bonds; credit
rating information from major rating
agencies; and price information with
real-time transaction prices for corporate and agency bonds, and municipal
bonds, as well as end-of-day prices
for U.S. Treasury bonds.
Users can search for various types
of bonds by issuer, symbol or CUSIP.
The results are displayed along with
coupon payment, maturity, ratings
and last sale price. After you find a
bond, clicking on the symbol will
bring up a bevy of additional classification data.
An advanced bond search function
operates as a bond screener. Users
can input debt or asset class (Treasury, corporate, municipal or securitized products), issuer or bond type,
coupon and interest, maturity date
and ratings and credit; they can also
select whether the bond includes or
excludes options.
Yahoo! Finance Bonds Center
finance.yahoo.com/bonds
The Yahoo! Finance Bonds Center
lists the current U.S. Treasury bond
rates on the main page along with
a market summary and top news.
Bond market news is provided by
Briefing.com and includes news on
the Fed and interest rates. Composite
bond rates are given for municipal
and corporate bonds across all credit
ratings.
A bond screener allows you to
select a type of bond to search for:
Treasury, Treasury zero-coupon,
corporate or municipal (by state). In
addition, there are seven data points
for narrowing down a search, where
you select the minimum and maximum values.
The bond lookup tool allows you
to search for a bond by its name. If
you are unsure of the name, typing in
the issuer will provide bonds that are
issued by that particular entity. Data
on the bond is provided by ValuBond
and includes price, coupon rate, maturity date, yield-to-maturity, current
yield, Fitch rating and callability.
Yahoo! Finance’s useful Education
Center includes a section on bonds.
Basic learning tools describe what
bonds are, what you can expect from
a change in interest rates and the risk
Computerized Investing
versus reward aspects of investing
in bonds. For more advanced bond
education, articles on bond laddering
and global bonds are also available.
Yahoo! Finance Bond Screener
Wall Street Journal Online
online.wsj.com
The Wall Street Journal Online’s
bond section, found under Markets,
is very robust. The main page lists
the Treasury yields for each maturity length and provides recent price
change. Current consumer money
rates such as the prime rate, 30-year
fixed mortgage rate, home-equity loan
rate and 48-month new car loan rate
are listed on the main page, along
with their 52-week highs and lows.
In addition, offerings of the major
global government agencies are listed
with their yields. Links to coupons
and yields for guaranteed investment
contracts, mortgage-backed securities, tax-exempt bonds, TIPS and
Treasury STRIPS are all provided, as
is a weekly snapshot of the key rates.
A bond calendar reports upcoming
Treasury, municipal and corporate
bond offerings. For municipal and
corporate bonds, the website also
provides the total offering amount,
maturity and ratings from Moody’s
and Standard & Poor’s (Fitch for
municipal bonds).
Finally, WSJ Online offers a section
on government data and the Federal
Reserve. Links to Federal Reserve
monetary data, Federal Reserve interest rates and a weekly snapshot of
key interest rates are all available.
WSJ Online Weekly Snapshot of Key Interest Rates
Morningstar.com Bonds
www.morningstar.com
Morningstar.com’s Bond section has
not been featured here before, but
has improved over the recent years
and is now worth mentioning. The
best two features of the bond area
are the bond strategies and insights
and the ratings that Morningstar’s
analysts provide.
The main Bond page includes the
latest Bond Strategist column. There
is a new article every week that gives
Fourth Quarter 2013
a solid review of the bond markets.
In addition, all bond articles are
archived and a link to the archive is
provided on the landing page.
Morningstar now provides its own
credit ratings for individual companies, shown in the bonds tab of a
company’s profile page.
The bonds tab of individual stocks
shows the company’s current and
historical capital structure. In addition, it lists the company’s current
outstanding bonds along with maturity dates, amount, price, coupon rate
and whether the bonds are optionable. Debt and coverage ratios are
also provided at the bottom of the
page.
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