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Thursday, November 30, 2006

#266: Bond Price Quotes in Wall Street Journal

If you go to the front page of the WSJ, they list the 10 Year treasury note's current yield, then the change in price, and the percentage change in price. Well, what they don't list, and what I'm most interested in, is the change in yield. I'm not interested in the change in price. While it is possible to calculate the change in yield from the information given, I find it annoying that they are out of sync in the bases they are using. The change-in figure should reflect the first number, so either the change-in value should reflect the change in the yield or the first value should be the price of the bond, not the yield. They are mixing apples and oranges, which maybe makes sense to bond professionals, but to regular people interested in how interest rates have moved during the day, it is confusing and not communicating the desired information to the reader. Severity: 2

2 comments:

Vicki Stockton said...

Ummm...what?

Marc Schoenfeld said...

example from today the 10 yr bond is quoted on WJS front page as:

10-YR Note 4.547% [up] 14/32

so you see we have the CURRENT YIELD of 4.547% and the CHANGE in PRICE of 14/32 listed. What's not listed is the CURRENT PRICE 100 17/32 or the CHANGE in YIELD which is ??? and that is what I am annoyed about. I want to know what the change in yield was without having to infer it from the other information.

yeah, i know it's lame...