How to monitor and display a bond's "Yield to Maturity"

Options
gkading
gkading Member ✭✭
in Investing (Windows)
It seems that the "Yield on Investment" as calculated in Quicken simply uses the current interest (or dividend) income divided by the market price. But for a bond that is trading at premium (as many are currently) this is not best measure - a "yield to maturity" that takes into account that the bond will be redeemed at par, not current market price, is what should be calculated. How can this be displayed.
Tagged:

Answers

  • Rocket J Squirrel
    Rocket J Squirrel SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    Options
    You can manually enter YTM in a bond's Other Info dialog, but Quicken doesn't do anything with it or display it elsewhere that I'm aware of.

    Quicken user since version 2 for DOS, now using QWin Biz & Personal Subscription (US) on Win10 Pro.

  • gkading
    gkading Member ✭✭
    Options
    Sure - but the YTM is dynamic as the market price changes and as time passes. So not a real solution.
  • Rocket J Squirrel
    Rocket J Squirrel SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    Options
    gkading said:
    Sure - but the YTM is dynamic as the market price changes and as time passes. So not a real solution.
    Agreed. The only place I can get updated YTMs is on my monthly brokerage statements. And I'm not going to bother updating them in Quicken because that is useless.

    Quicken user since version 2 for DOS, now using QWin Biz & Personal Subscription (US) on Win10 Pro.

  • Jim_Harman
    Jim_Harman SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    Options
    It appears that Quicken does not have the information needed to compute the yield to maturity. It has the current value, maturity date and estimated annual income if you enter it, but not the face value. To calculate the YTM accurately, it would also need to know how often the interest is paid.
    QWin Premier subscription
  • gkading
    gkading Member ✭✭
    Options
    The face value is quite easy to either input and/or assume as 100 as compared with market pricing. The frequency of interest payments is already a field that is available for manual input. So all of the inputs are available (albeit several require manual input), just need the calculation.

Categories