Bond Basics: What are Bonds?

Bonds have a reputation for being somewhat boring by virtue of the fact that they are considered to be safe, stable, reliable investments with limited growth potential. For this reason, many amateur investors ignore bonds altogether. However, this goes against one of our cardinal rules: Never get emotional about trading. As with any other aspect of investment knowledge, ignoring bonds altogether is a mistake. While it's true that in a bull market they can seem to offer insignificant returns compared to stocks, but all it takes is a bear market for investors to again recognize the value of the stability provided by bonds.

What Are Bonds?

So what are bonds exactly? It's quite simple, actually; a bond is really nothing more than a loan, but instead of you taking out the loan to buy a car or house or whatever, you are the lender. Companies and government organizations require capital for everything, but large organizations require much more than can be provided through regular channels such as banks. The solution is for them is to issue a bond on a public market, whereupon hundreds or thousands (or even millions!) of investors will provide the needed capital.

How Can I Make Money From Bonds?

Obviously, you don't just lend money to large companies and government organizations out of the goodness of your heart. When a bond is issued, three quantities are specified by the issuer. The face value of the bond is the amount you are lending. Returns on a bond are specified by the interest rate of the bond, often referred to as the 'coupon', as well as the time you hold the bond; the date on which the bond issuer has to repay the loan is called the maturity date. The nice thing about bonds is that you can always determine the exact amount you will get back. As a quick example, let's say you buy a bond for a face value of $1000, a coupon of 5%, and a maturity of ten years. This means you would receive $50 per year in interest payments for the next ten years, and then at the end of 10 years you would receive the face value of $1000, providing a total return of $500 on your investment. Of course, in such a scenario your real profit would not actually be $500 since we haven't accounted for inflation, so be careful of that, but you get the idea.

Debt versus Equity

An important difference between stock and bond securities is that stocks are 'equity' whereas bonds are 'debt'. When you buy equity in a company, you become a part owner in that corporation which comes with additional rights such as voting and profit sharing. When you purchase bonds, on the other end, you become a creditor to that organization. The advantage to this is that creditors take priority over shareholders in the case of bankruptcy. The flipside is that if that company does phenomenally well, the bond holder will not share in the profits, he or she will only be entitled to the face value plus the interest.

To summarize, bonds can be an excellent low-risk investment choice and for this reason you should definitely consider bonds as part of your investment portfolio. It's unlikely however that you will get rich on just bonds alone, so keep your other trading alternatives alive and use bonds primarily as long-term investments.

More Resources:-