Determinants of interest rates in bond valuation
Answers
Answer:
Bond valuation is a way to determine the theoretical fair value (or par value) of a particular bond.
It involves calculating the present value of a bond's expected future coupon payments, or cash flow, and the bond's value upon maturity, or face value.
As a bond's par value and interest payments are set, bond valuation helps investors figure out what rate of return would make a bond investment worth the cost.
Understanding Bond Valuation
A bond is a debt instrument that provides a steady income stream to the investor in the form of coupon payments. At the maturity date, the full face value of the bond is repaid to the bondholder. The characteristics of a regular bond include:
Coupon rate: Some bonds have an interest rate, also known as the coupon rate, which is paid to bondholders semi-annually. The coupon rate is the fixed return that an investor earns periodically until it matures.
Maturity date: All bonds have maturity dates, some short-term, others long-term. When a bond matures, the bond issuer repays the investor the full face value of the bond. For corporate bonds, the face value of a bond is usually $1,000 and for government bonds, the face value is $10,000. The face value is not necessarily the invested principal or purchase price of the bond.
Current Price: Depending on the level of interest rate in the environment, the investor may purchase a bond at par, below par, or above par. For example, if interest rates increase, the value of a bond will decrease since the coupon rate will be lower than the interest rate in the economy. When this occurs, the bond will trade at a discount, that is, below par. However, the bondholder will be paid the full face value of the bond at maturity even though he purchased it for less than the par value.
Bond Valuation in Practice
Since bonds are an essential part of the capital markets, investors and analysts seek to understand how the different features of a bond interact in order to determine its intrinsic value. Like a stock, the value of a bond determines whether it is a suitable investment for a portfolio and hence, is an integral step in bond investing.
Bond valuation, in effect, is calculating the present value of a bond’s expected future coupon payments. The theoretical fair value of a bond is calculated by discounting the present value of its coupon payments by an appropriate discount rate. The discount rate used is the yield to maturity, which is the rate of return that an investor will get if s/he reinvested every coupon payment from the bond at a fixed interest rate until the bond matures. It takes into account the price of a bond, par value, coupon rate, and time to maturity.
$42.8 trillion
The size of the U.S. bond market, or the total amount of debt outstanding, at the end of 2018, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), an industry