How to Find Bonds on the Web

TRACE is a pretty useful service for any bond investor. Here's a short blurb on what it is (source: FINRA):

"The Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine (TRACE) is the FINRA developed vehicle that facilitates the mandatory reporting of over the counter secondary market transactions in eligible fixed income securities. All broker/dealers who are FINRA member firms have an obligation to report transactions in corporate bonds to TRACE under an SEC approved set of rules."

For those of you who have a Bloomberg terminal, TRACE data is pretty easy to come by as is searching for any bond information. You get prospectuses, bond info and last traded prices all within a few pecks of the keyboard. How do the rest of us average folk do it?

Here are a few useful tips I have found:

1) What if I want to see all the bonds of a particular issuer?

http://www.investinginbonds.com/corporatebonds/(mut1qxnnahaztrigsfkxmi45)/searchissuers.aspx?flag=search&criteria=keyword1+keyword2+...

So for example if you wanted to find BP bonds you would type,

http://www.investinginbonds.com/corporatebonds/(mut1qxnnahaztrigsfkxmi45)/searchissuers.aspx?flag=search&criteria=BP

If there are two words in the name such as Sara Lee you would type,

http://www.investinginbonds.com/corporatebonds/(mut1qxnnahaztrigsfkxmi45)/searchissuers.aspx?flag=search&criteria=Sara+Lee

Click on the bond issue and you will get CUSIP and other details.

2) What if I have the CUSIP and I want to see most recent quotes from TRACE?

http://www.investinginbonds.com/corporatebonds/(cdgkcy45yesfqj45fsp05nm0)/cusip.aspx?action=all&cusip=CUSIP

Replace the bold CUSIP with the actual code

3) How do I see prospectuses from a particular issuer?

http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=CIK Code&type=424&dateb=&owner=exclude&count=40

Replace the bold CIK Code with the actual code. You need to know the SEC's Central Index Key (CIK) to execute this search. Get that by going here http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/cik.htm.

All issuers have to file SEC forms 424 for any offering (stocks, bonds, etc...) and you should be able to see all of these on the SEC's EDGAR site.

I am sure there are more elegant ways to do this, but hopefully this helps