Finding bond cusips

On Mon 14 Nov 2005 08:26:47a, Doug Kanter wrote in news:H81ef.2499$ snipped-for-privacy@news01.roc.ny:

Most/many brokers allow you to search their bond inventory online and submit buy offers. Since yours may not, you may want to try this site I found doing a search.

You may also want to consider getting a broker that allows this feature if you are expecting to do more bond buying in the future.

If they are asking you for the CUSIP, they may only just want to check a specific bond you are interested in and find another in their own inventory that has similar characteristics. You should still be able to give them the characteritics you want and they can do the search for you, Eg.: rated Aa or above with 5 to 10 year maturity, non-callable, etc.

Note: I am currently out of the corporate bond market with the current interest rate situation the way it is and doing mainly CDs with about 12 month maturities (mostly through brokers after searching their online inventory). The most recent one I bought (this one was locally) was at

4.75%, 12 months at Charter One bank. There aren't any short term bonds that are that attractive to me.

Note 2: None of my brokers has any bonds from Kodak in their inventory.

Note 3: usually an investor does not use CUSIP as a parameter in a search or screen. You will see the CUSIP, of course, when you look at the details of a bond that you have found in a search.

Thanks for the thoughts, Mike. I latched onto the cusip number idea after speaking with someone at Ameritrade, who insists that was the only way they could be sure they were providing the bonds I specified. From my days at PaineWebber, I know that issuer, maturity, etc were enough to ID a certain bond, so maybe the guy at Ameritrade was clueless. I'm trying a couple of more companies before I decide where to open the account.

The money's currently at at UBS, but apparently it's not enough to warrant anyone's interest. I could move just the stock portion elsewhere and buy bonds at UBS, but the fees are quite high (not for buying the bonds, but just for having the assets there). So anyway....more info later.

Take a look at Fidelity Investments. I recently attended a presentation on their bond trading platform and I was quite impressed at the extent and transparency of their offering.

Dan

For a corporate bonds database I worked on about 10 years ago, ticker, coupon, maturity and series were a unique index on the table. Many corporates had 2 series, one of which could be sold to domestic investors and one which couldn't.

Only Corp or Muni Bonds worth buying right now are VRDN or ARS. Personally way rates are today it almost not worth buying Corp bonds unless you are in the lowest federal tax bracket or in a state with no state income tax like Nevada or Texas even then not a very good move anyways as interest rates are going up so most bonds are going to trade at a bigger discount over what they are priced at today.

I sold all my Corp VRDN around March as rates have increased a lot faster on Muni VRDN(are bonds that reset weekly so they always trade at par). Examples are following:

NY State AMT Free VRDN with full insurance and letter of credit currently paying between 2.99%-3.09% on a weekly reset. Ca State AMT Free VRDN with full insurance and letter of credit currently paying between 2.94%-3.04% on a weekly reset. AAA rated Corp VRDN pays 4.65-4.85%. Example Chase VRDN Cspid 16162LBA1 currently paying 4.67% on a weekly reset.

If you look at NY or California a VRDN paying 2.95% for anyone in 28% Fed + 9% State is taxable equivalent yield 4.68% if you are a higher tax bracket is even higher. At 33% Fed = 5.09% and at 35% Fed = 5.37%

Down side to VRDN is they are sold in $100K+ sizes only. ARS are sold in $25K lots except they are sold in Dutch Auctions. So you can only redem them at auction. MARS or Muni version of ARS also can carry Insurance and Letters of credit so they are super safe.