Account Number:   Pin:  
 
No account? Sign Up Now or Take a Test Drive
Perform a Price Comparison

HOW DO I KNOW THAT SHOP4BONDS IS OFFERING THE BROADEST INVENTORY AND THE BEST PRICES?

Answering this question will take a little time, but saving thousands and thousands of dollars is well worth it. Follow the steps below:

Prove to yourself we have the Largest Online Bond Inventory:

  1. Sign up for our Free Test Drive and take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with our Search procedures.

  2. Go to the Alpha Platform and Click on either Corporates or Municipals, and, without doing anything else, go to the bottom of the screen and push "Find Bonds". When the bond list comes up, look at the top right hand corner and it will show total offerings. The Alpha Municipal offerings should total close to 12,000. The Corporate offers should display over 13,000. A combined total of over 25,000 offerings! Our Beta platform has about 20,000 Municipal offers. Adding both platforms together, you see over 45,000 offerings each day!

Prove to yourself we have the lowest prices for Secondary Market Offers:
  1. After signing up for a Free Test Drive, perform a bond search on the Alpha system. By filling in your parameters on the Bond Search Screen, you will generate of list of bond issues. This typically returns several offers for the same issue, at different prices. As you scroll from page to page, you will continue to find bond issues with multiple offers. These are the real dealer prices and there are multiple offers because multiple dealers are offering a particular bond. Get the lowest offer, make a handwritten note of the price and the CUSIP Number.

  2. Now go to the current source for your bond purchases and get an offering on that CUSIP number. Their price should be anywhere from 1.00% to 4.0% percent higher than what you are seeing on the Shop4Bonds platform. This will vary depending upon whether you are at a full service firm like Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney, Morgan Stanley or a discount firm.

  3. Repeat this a few times and you will see the difference in viewing real dealer prices. Everyone else we know still uses hidden mark ups. Remember, we charge an execution fee that takes 1/10 of 1.0% from the yield of the dealer price, but your net price with us should be lower virtually every time.



Proving to yourself we have much better prices than the New Issues you may be buying from your Full Service Broker.

This is where the difference can be really amazing!
  1. Next time you get an offer for a new issue of a major market name like; Ford Motor Credit, GE, GMAC, Bof A etc., note the offering yield and the maturity.

  2. Now go to the Shop4Bonds system and enter the name of the issuer and a range of maturity dates close to the date of the new issue.

  3. Push "Find Bonds". Most often you will get offerings within a few months of the new issue. You'll find offers as much .6% higher for the same issuer, the same type of bond, only the price may be at a discount or premium. You should never buy one of the new issues if there are secondary market pieces available. The new issues are a bargain for the issuers and a high commission product for the selling firms. (Note: We do offer new issues by email but we make sure they are the best yields available at the time of the offer)