Our goal with each new corporate bond recommendation is that our subscribers can
buy or sell the bonds as close to the recommended price as possible. Generally
speaking, while our recommendations have caused significant volume increases in
our recommended bonds, for bond recommendations since our first set of
recommendations on September 26, 2017, we have only seen material immediate
pricing increases for two new buy recommendations, which we made December 17,
2020. Since then, we have taken several actions to limit the market impact of
new bond recommendations, which have been successful. Click to view a preview of
our best bonds blog post, which
shows the trading activity of recommendations made September 9, 2021.
In fixed income, market impact is not a concept limited to investors buying
individual bonds. Large institutional investors grapple with this issue every
day. The challenge is that, due to the lack of transparency of bond funds vs.
individual bonds, bond fund investors don't know the magnitude of the market
impact caused by bond funds buying and selling securities since these investors
only see that fund's net asset value per share. Investors in individual
corporate bonds know the exact price at which they buy and sell each bond.
We recommend subscribers buy bonds online and hold accounts at
Fidelity and E*TRADE, which helps ensure subscribers can see all available bond
quotes and execute trades at competitive prices and with low commissions.
Corporate bonds trade in a dynamic marketplace, and, while corporate bond
prices are typically not as volatile as stocks, there can be
market-driven price movements that can result in subscribers transacting above
or below our recommended prices.