It Can Cost 20 Times More to Trade A Bond Than a Stock

Most investors own bonds through mutual funds or exchange-traded funds. But the household sector, including individual investors, still holds nearly $430 billion in corporate bonds, according to the Federal Reserve. If you buy bonds directly, it’s vital to keep trading costs from devouring your income, especially in today’s world of scrimpy interest rates.

Lawrence Harris, a finance professor at the University of Southern California and former chief economist at the Securities and Exchange Commission, has just completed a study of how expensive corporate bonds are to trade.

Prof. Harris analyzed bond-price quotations gleaned through Interactive Brokers Group, the deep-discount brokerage firm where he is a member of the board of directors, and trade data from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. He estimates that individual investors are paying bond dealers and other middlemen an average of $7.72 per $1,000 of principal value to buy corporate bonds. If you paid that much to buy stocks, 200 shares of a $50 stock would run you at least $77.20 in trading costs—instead of the roughly $10 that you would pay at most online brokerage firms.

Corporate bonds yield an average of 3.3%, according to Barclays. So Mr. Harris’s analysis suggests that trading costs consume roughly the first three months’ worth of income on the average corporate bond—assuming you pay your broker only to buy but not to sell.

Source: Huh? It Costs How Much to Trade a Bond?

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