NEW YORK, April 8, 2014 /PRNewswire/ – BondView (www.bondview.com), the leading investor resource for municipal bond information, has made available free historical pricing information for all 1.8 million municipal bonds. This information is being released just in time for tax season, so that retail investors, accountants and financial advisors can more easily obtain historical muni bond prices.
BondView has quickly become the world’s leading free website for accurate municipal bond information and is used daily by thousands of individual retail investors and their advisors. Leading users include Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Fidelity, MetLife, Price Waterhouse, Harvard University, the Securities & Exchange Commission and the US Department of Treasury.
Why Are Free Historical Bond Prices Hard To Find?
While the average investor can easily find historical stock prices, investors often become frustrated when searching for historical muni bond prices.
The difficulty in finding historical pricing information http://bondview.com/pricecheck/historical_estimated_price/79854SAS8 is because most bonds trade infrequently. Typically less than 1.5% of all municipal bonds trade on a given day making it nearly impossible for an investor to find a timely historical trade as a reference point to then determine an accurate price.
Robert Kane, CEO of BondView, said “Accountants, estate planners and trust departments need accurate historical bond prices going back many years for tax purposes.”
Steve McLaughlin, Portfolio Manager, at Granite Springs Asset Management (http://www.granite-springs.com/who-we-are.html#stevemclaughlin) said, “BondView addresses a major obstacle in our market which is fair pricing and liquidity measurement. There are over 50,000 issuers of municipal bonds, 1.8 million outstanding cusips and on most days no more than 1.5 percent of the outstanding bonds trade.”
For those bonds that don’t trade frequently, BondView’s algorithmic model provides estimated prices by reviewing the trading of similar bonds by features including coupon, maturity, sector, rating, state and tax treatment.
BondView’s pricing algorithms are calculated based on Financial Accounting Standards Board guidelines (Topic 820 formerly known as FAS 157) and have been back tested across an extensive repository of municipal bond data. The result is dependable pricing.
“Up until a few years ago, you just had the traditional well established companies that supplied pricing matrixes to the industry. A new independent unbiased firm that provides a new set of eyes using different methodology is a welcomed addition,” said McLaughlin.
BondView will also soon release its new real-time early warning system to monitor investors’ bond portfolios. This new service tracks bonds and alerts users to significant changes in estimated price, yield, spread, defaults and bond maturity. The early warning system helps investors and their advisors make more informed decisions. BondView offers free professional level features to all investors including Stress Testing, Gain/Loss Harvesting, Portfolio Report Cards and Portfolio Analysis tools.
About Us – BondView (www.bondview.com) is a leading advocate for market transparency and our mission is to promote smart, informed decision making by municipal bond investors and their advisors.
CONTACT:
Lisa Hendrickson
BondView, LLC
866.261.9533
Email