Level: Beginner

In this course, IBKR senior market analyst Steven Levine provides essential details about the U.S. corporate bond market, including the types of securities investors typically encounter such as secured and unsecured notes. We’ll also offer you some tools to enable you to obtain a better understanding of the risks involved with corporate bonds and how they may be mitigated, as well as recent developments that have helped shape market dynamics. Lastly, we’ll walk you through the IBKR Trader Workstation’s Global Bond Scanner, where you can locate certain corporate bonds in the secondary market, create charts and conduct due diligence to help inform your investment decisions.

This lesson provides an overview of what to expect from the introductory course on U.S. corporate bonds.

Lesson: #2

Default Risk

This lesson highlights the importance of default risk for corporate bond investors and ways in which it may be addressed.

This lesson illustrates the complexities of conducting fundamental analysis using an example of a corporate bond offered during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This lesson homes in on how interest rates affect the value, and ultimately the supply and demand levels, of corporate bonds, as well as how certain central banks have had a significant influence over activity in the market.

Lesson: #5

Credit Ratings

This lesson examines credit ratings and how they may affect the value of a corporate bond issuance.

This lesson offers insights into how a U.S. corporate bond is typically structured and priced in the primary market, including some of the regulatory rules that govern this process.

This lesson provides some insights into how to launch and use the IBKR Global Bond Scanner to locate and trade corporate bonds in the secondary market.

This final lesson explores the differences between yields and prices in the U.S. corporate bond market, compares two debt instruments, and offers ways in which security valuations can change in the secondary market.