This week, the London Stock Exchange (LSE) launched a new bond trading platform that will make bond investing more accessible and affordable for retail investors.
For the launch of the bond trading platform, 49 gilts and ten corporate bonds by blue chip companies including Royal Bank of Scotland, Tesco, GlaxoSmithKline, BT, National Grid, Morgan Stanley and GE Capital have been made available for trading.
The trading platform allows investors to see prices directly and trade in increments as low as £1,000 for corporate bonds and £1 for gilts. Evolution Securities and Shore Capital Stockbrokers will help act as market makers on the platform.
In Singapore, access to the corporate bond market is usually available only to institutional investors or individual investors who are able to commit at least $250,000 on a single bond purchase.
There are a few statutory boards bonds (in size of $10k) which are listed on the SGX but liquidity for them is usually quite poor.
With fixed deposit interest rates at historical lows, there exists a gap in our market for low risk products which can give a decent yield of 4-5%.
Having a similar bond platform in Singapore would certainly benefit the retail investors here.
2 comments
DanielP says:
February 3, 2010 at 9:43 pm (UTC 8)
Hihi I can buy Spore Govt Bonds from Fundsupermart, but yields are quite pathetic. Very hard to find anything that is not too risky yielding 4%-5%.
lioninvestor says:
February 3, 2010 at 10:18 pm (UTC 8)
Hi Daniel,
Yes, the yields of sg bonds are very low now.