Bond Prices, Yields, and Spreads

Bond pricing, yield, discount, premium, spread, accrual, and return-measure terms used in fixed-income analysis.

Bond prices, yields, and spreads are the measures investors use to connect a bond’s market quote with its expected cash flows, credit risk, interest-rate exposure, and benchmark comparison.

Use this branch when a fixed-income question depends on price basis, yield definition, discount or premium treatment, spread compensation, valuation method, or return attribution. A quoted yield is not a promise of realized return.

What This Branch Covers

AreaUse it for
Price, Premium, Discount, and ParPar bonds, premium bonds, discount bonds, below-par pricing, deep discounts, and amortized premiums or discounts.
Yield Measures and Redemption YieldsCurrent yield, coupon yield, bond yield, yield to maturity, yield to call, yield to worst, and redemption yield.
Spread and Yield-Gap MeasuresYield spreads, reverse yield gaps, benchmark comparisons, and risk-spread interpretation.
Valuation, Return, and Roll-DownBond valuation, accrued interest, amortization, roll-down return, and yield-direction effects.

What to Verify

  • Price type: clean price, dirty price, percentage of par, dollar price, bid, ask, or evaluated price.
  • Settlement date, accrued interest, coupon frequency, day-count basis, and redemption assumptions.
  • Yield measure and whether it assumes maturity, call, average life, worst case, or current income only.
  • Benchmark, spread measure, credit rating, liquidity, tax status, and any embedded option.

Common Mistakes

  • Comparing a current yield with a yield to maturity or yield to worst.
  • Ignoring accrued interest when moving from quoted price to settlement amount.
  • Treating a spread as compensation for credit risk only, when liquidity, tax, optionality, and structure can also matter.
  • Assuming a premium or discount bond is automatically better or worse without checking total return and redemption path.

In this section

Choose a subsection first. Deeper term pages live inside each subsection, which keeps large topic hubs readable.

Price and Par

Bond price concepts for comparing market price with par and distinguishing market premiums or discounts from amortized balances.

Spread Measures

Yield-difference measures for comparing bond benchmarks, curve points, credit compensation, and bond-versus-equity valuation inputs.

Valuation and Return

Understand how bond price, accrued interest, coupon income, spread, amortization, and yield-curve roll-down combine into fixed-income value and return.

Yield Measures

Bond yield conventions for separating coupon income, annualized quotation, maturity, calls, principal timing, and realized return.

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