This project will involve a thorough credit analysis of two comparable publicly traded corporate bonds (preferably investment grade and in the same sector). You can select the corporate bonds from your own search by going to the FINRA bonds site: http://finra-markets.morningstar.com/BondCenter/ or Yahoo!Finance: http://screener.finance.yahoo.com/bonds.html. I have provided in D2L an Excel spreadsheet of current corporate bonds: Current US Corporate Bonds.xls
You can do a search of all corporate bonds using the bond screener tool on the FINRA and Yahoo sites. You should try to select bonds that are in the same industry/sector, have at least 5 years until maturity, and have comparable maturities and credit ratings. You can also select bonds from other sources, if you prefer.
Once you have selected your bonds (after determining that sufficient information about the firms and issues are available), you should submit this information into the appropriate D2L Dropbox folder (Names and CUSIPS of Bonds for Credit Analysis). Assume that your selections are approved, unless Dr. Krause notifies you to the contrary. (I am trying to avoid more than one analysis of the same bond).
The material in Chapter 5 and 6 should provide useful guidance for this project – as well as Janet Rilling’s presentation. Your analysis should include the following:
You can use a variety of sources of information to conduct your credit analysis (i.e. FactSet, Morningstar, Bloomberg, Moody’s, Investinginbonds.com, etc.). In all cases you must properly cite the references that you used. Your credit analysis is expected to be between 5-7 pages in total (in addition to any information contained in your appendix).