Distressed Debt Investing

As a follow up to original post, can anyone recommend any investing newsletters that focus on any types of bond or fixed income investments, not specifically distressed?

The No Load fund X newsletter is highly rated by Hulbert for its Monthly Upgrader Portfolio (equity.) The same newsletter has a Monthly Flexible Income which earned 4.2% for 12 months ending

Frank

But those are mutual funds. I want to invest in individual bonds.

I personally don't trust the mutual fund industry at all. I don't believe that the only expenses are the ones they disclose. I believe there exist tremendous numbers of hidden expenses, incentive payments, and opportunity costs associated with buying assets at higher than market prices, etc. I wouldn't say that all funds are involved in such self-dealing, but I would say that many are, and the incentives to hide expenses in creative ways is very great.

Since I understand how to read financial statements, and generally understand business strategy well enough to have some idea what is and is not a commodity, I prefer to self-direct into specific assets.

For bonds, I'm looking for a newsletter that would consider bonds issued by a specific company that might be underpriced, and that would discuss the case for that.

Buying individual bonds has it's own problems. The market is not very open or transparent. Usually, you are buying and selling to the broker's bond desk, which sets prices as they see fit. This leads to large bid-ask spreads, which are not disclosed. -- Doug

You are spot on correct and I posted another few threads in this newsgroup regarding this.

I have found that most broker's bond desks steal about 3 to 5% of your principal on each bond trade. You can see it for yourself just by asking them for a quote and then going to see the actual activity on FINRA for the target CUSIP. If the bond is trading at $89 to $90, your broker is quoting you $93 to $95. It's outrageous.

I personally like the Australian income market better. They trade income investments like securities on an electronic exchange, and a $1 spread is typical.

US bond debt is more interesting to me if it is distressed because the potential gains exceed the upfront theft by your broker signficantly.