Introduction to Bonds

This course provides an introduction to fixed income.

It covers the key characteristics and the features of a bond and explains the relationship between interest rates and market prices. Participants will examine the yield curve, its shape, and the current global market conditions.

The course also explains day count conventions and the concepts of carry and roll down.

Suitability

This course is for individuals new to the financial markets.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this course delegates should understand:

  • Key characteristics of bonds and how to price bonds off the yield curve
  • Day count conventions and how to calculate clean and dirty bond prices
  • The dynamics of the yield curve and carry and roll down

Course Content

The characteristics of a bond

  • Basic features of government, domestic, Eurobond and foreign bonds
  • Bonds VS loans
  • How bond prices behave and key interest rates

Bond yields

  • Yield-to-maturity
  • International yield curves
  • Pricing bonds off the yield curve and in Excel

Exercises: Pricing a bond off a given yield curve, and again after a parallel shift in the curve

Day count conventions

  • Summary of conventions
  • Clean VS dirty pricing
  • Accrued interest

Exercises: Calculating clean and dirty bond prices

The yield curve

  • A ‘normal’ yield curve and current international yield curves
  • Textbook theories of yield curve shape
  • The front end, belly and the long end

Exercises: Building a yield curve

Carry and roll down

  • Positive and negative carry
  • Pull to par

100%

of our clients would recommend Alpha to a colleague or peer

90%

of a cohort was promoted within 2 years after participating in an Alpha course.

96%

of participants felt more confident in their role, following an Alpha commercial leadership course.

Why study with Alpha?

Innovation and creativity born from experience

We are thought leaders in instructional and learning journey design and holistic solution architects. We have extensive finance and investments experience combined with skills application to deliver performance improving results. We develop immersive learning environments that maximize time to productivity, support talent retention and added value to improving quality of hires.

Knowledge Exchange Evangelists

We are focused on mining the embedded organisational intellectual capital for the benefit of the next generation. We create and curate best in class practice gathered from our experience with the leading financial institutions. We design our programmes with the end in mind – what results are you trying to achieve with this intervention? What metrics will we set ourselves to achieve that?

Generation Proof

Quality and innovation, using current market and industry best practices, have made us a trusted partner in delivering dynamic and motivating training for the financial and capital markets. Our programmes are generation proof and responsive to evolving learner needs and styles. Our solutions use a multi-stakeholder engagement strategy that expands beyond relationships between the learner and learning provider. We create connections with managers, peers and the wider business to drive impactful return on investment..

Enquire now

"*" indicates required fields

This form collects your contact information so that we can correspond with you.
Check out our privacy policy for more information about how we protect and manage your data.
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
The team are so friendly and pleasant to work with, everyone is very professional and keen to help us. Building a relationship over the past couple of years helps us to feel like the Alpha team are even more able to understand our needs and provide more proactive solutions.
Find out more about our in-house training courses