At Par

  

Most bonds sell in units of $1,000. For all kinds of weird historical reasons, the thousand figure there isn't the primary quote when brokers quote bond prices...rather, everything is out of 100. So, a bond trading "at 99 point 2" is actually likely a thousand dollar bond selling for 992 dollars.

That 99.2 is "below par" and if a bond were "above par", it'd be trading at some value over the quoted 100 or some figure above $1,000.

Why do bonds move above and below par? Lots of reasons. The biggest is perceived risk that the bond won't actually pay off its borrowed principal. That's individual bond risk.

But the overall market can change as well. So, the government perceives inflation to be a strong force on the horizon so the Fed quickly raises prevailing interest rates. And if they do, bond prices fall across the board. So, a bond with a 6% coupon that used to be trading above par (which is to say, above a grand), in this scenario, could drop below par if prevailing rates suddenly go up.

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Finance: What are the Major Classes of B...8 Views

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Finance a la shmoop what are the major classes of bonds? well there's world

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history advanced trig intro to growing a moustache but of course that's just for [Books appear on table]

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college bound bonds who are trying to impress the top tier universities well

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in terms of bond classes in the real world there are so many flavors to

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choose from first we've got senior obligation bonds [Man walking in street and senior obligation bond appears]

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and these guys aren't cranky or gray-haired they are the first type of

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bonds that a company would have to pay if they went bankrupt they're often

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considered the most secure types of bonds for just that reason so they pay [Senior obligation bond stamped with most secure]

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secure than senior bonds so they've paid a little bit more rent on the money if a

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company declares bankruptcy the juniors are paid after the seniors duh...

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sophomores, freshmen get behind them asset-backed bonds are a different thing

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and they're backed by the assets a company has for example an airline might [Plane landing on runway]

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guarantee its bonds via the airplanes it owns if it owns them all right moving on

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then we have debentures which are backed only by the creditworthiness of the

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company so basically the company is just handing you an IOU and promising to pay [People shaking hands]

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you back with a handshake trust us yeah sure so debentures have to pay

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even more interest and if the company messes up and can't pay you back well

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too bad cupcake the only comfort you would have in that situation is that the

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company's credit would be wrecked forever if they couldn't pay their [Miley Cyrus swinging on wrecking ball]

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debentures or other forms of bonds at the end of the CEOs career and pretty

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much all the management and so on so they would really hate to go bankrupt yet

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with the debenture yeah and that that all might be cold comfort to you though

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especially if your investments were the ones wiped out by them not paying their [Woman appears at office desk]

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debentures and well then you can't pay your utility bill all right moving on

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convertible bonds like their name suggests can be converted usually into

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common stock at a given price to the given time period you can make a tidy

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profit converting bonds into stocks if a company suddenly starts to do well and

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shares of stock well when the stocks only at 10 bucks that's not

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very attractive but if that stock went to $50 it'd be like break-even if I went

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to $100 while the bond converts and you'd double your money there...

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all right well finally there are zero

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coupon bonds which don't pay you anything until the very end you buy them

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at a big discount like six hundred twelve dollars and then they pay par

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a thousand dollars like ten years later once they reach maturity they pay back

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high school dating the problem is that some companies have a hard time paying [Man stood beside vault of cash]

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back all these payments at once and you get no interest payment along the way

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with a zero coupon bond so they tend to pay even more interest which is good for

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interest in principal at the end of the zero coupon right well some company set

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