Saturday, November 1, 2008

Wondering How Do Bonds Work?

By Tamara Frett

When the economy is terrible and the stock market keeps declining, it is time to ask the question how do bonds work! Bonds are great, safe investments, especially in uncertain times. However, before you invest in any kind of a bond, you need to find out how do bonds work.

There are many types of bonds to invest in. Fortunately, all bonds work in the similar ways so you only need to find out how do bonds work once to know if bonds are right for you. Then you can decide on the type of bond you want to invest in.

Bonds, unlike stocks, are debt securities. When you buy a bond, you are lending money to the bond issuer. In return, the issuer pays you interest and promise to pay back the principal at the end of the life of the bond. Each bond has a face value which is $100. The face value is sometimes referred to as par value.

Once issued, bonds can be traded at par, at discount or at premium. You can buy bonds that are priced at discount or priced higher than the par value. No matter how much you paid for the bond, you will still only get the par value back at redemption. That means if you over pay for the bond, you may be losing money in the end.

The most popular area to learn when learning about how do bonds work is about bond interest rates and interest payments. Bonds are attractive to investors because they pay interests regularly. Bonds that pay interests are great for income which a lot of people need. Interests can be paid monthly, quarterly, semi annually or yearly.

The coupon rate of a bond is the interest rate but a high coupon bond is not always the best bond to buy. When you learn about how do bonds work, you will learn about how to calculate the bond yield which is a better measure of whether a bond is a good investment or not.

The higher the yield, the better the bond. If bond A has higher yield than bond B, bond A can be better than bond B even if bond B pays higher interest rate. You need to learn all about bond yields when you learn about how do bonds work.

When investing in bonds, it is important to know how do bonds work before you buy. Bonds are long term investments. If you do not know how bonds work and invest in the wrong bonds, it may be hard to get your money out later without penalties.

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