Financial markets offer investors many trading options, From stocks and commodities to mutual funds, ETFs, currencies, bonds, and derivatives. Each instrument provides different opportunities based on an investor's risk tolerance and desired returns. Some investors are comfortable with high-risk, high-reward options, while others prefer a more conservative approach, seeking steady returns with minimal volatility.

While the saying “No pain, no gain” often applies to higher-risk investments, fixed-income instruments, like bonds, offer a stable counterpoint. Bonds can be an attractive option for those who want higher returns than typical fixed deposits, certificates of deposit, or high-yield savings accounts. Bonds allow investors to “climb the earnings ladder” with generally predictable returns, making them a popular choice for those looking for reliable income without the stock market's volatility.

However, with so many bonds traded over-the-counter (OTC), navigating this market to find the right match can be daunting. Each bond has unique terms, yields, and risk profiles, and selecting the one that aligns with specific financial goals requires careful consideration. This is where bond screeners become essential tools, helping investors filter through options to find bonds that meet their yield, maturity, credit rating criteria, and more.

To simplify this process, we’ve compiled a list of our top five bond screeners. These include both traditional tools and some unconventional ones, designed to simplify bond selection and help investors build a portfolio that meets their income goals while matching their risk appetite.

Public.com Bond Screener

The Public.com Bond Screener is free. You can explore thousands of bonds, whether treasury or corporate, by applying customizations per the investor’s objectives and risk appetite. The comprehensive set of filters includes various filters such as bond type, order type, yield, coupon, maturity, rating, liquidity score, etc., and these filters take care of investors’ even the smallest of considerations that are in their mind while making the investment call. This, in turn, helps the investors choose diversified bonds among many to build a concrete portfolio.

Charles Schwab BondSource

Schwab BondSource is a comprehensive platform that helps investors buy, sell, and research bonds. While Schwab has a larger integrated platform for other financial instruments, its bond screener Schwab BondSource is integrated into that broader platform. It gives investors access to different categories of bonds – new issues of municipal and corporate bonds from around 200+ bond dealers. Moreover, since Charles Schwab is a veteran financial services company, top-notch wealth management advice is also offered to investors, and they can get a balanced perspective on the US bond market with practical insights from third-party sources. Schwab offers independent research from Credit Suisse, Briefing.com, etc. Various tools such as trade history analysis and market depth analysis allowing access to all the ask and bid prices for a particular bond and bond alerts for credit rating changes, current offerings, etc., when utilized together, can benefit the investor greatly by allowing them to utilize these powerful tools for their decision making. Everything comes at a price, and this premium range of services that Schwab provides to investors comes at a transaction fee levied on every trade, depending on the category and type of bond issued. It starts at $1 per bond and goes up to $250 maximum for online trades, and for broker-assisted trades, the amount starts from $25.

Fidelity Bond Tools

Fidelity is known for its wide range of financial services. While there might not be a specific bond screener, Fidelity has tools to help investors who want to invest in fixed-income securities. While Fixed Income Dashboard and Bid Quote Status Dashboard are some of the tools that help one keep track of their investments and keep a tab on real-time price changes triggered by market forces, one tool that stands out completely is its Bond Ladder Tool, which helps one build a portfolio of bonds that mature at staggered intervals that can help one to generate a consistent flow of income over time. Once the investor selects their time horizon, bond type, and rating, Fidelity suggests bonds for each rung that would help in a constant flow of income for the investor, making it a must-try for all bond investors.

BondCliQ

Bonds are generally traded in the secondary market, and rather than being traded on exchanges, most of the bonds are traded OTC. In such a scenario, transparency becomes a significant concern for the investors. BondCliQ is an innovative bond market data platform that was brought into existence to establish and promote bond transparency by providing real-time bond quotes and trade data. It is available for institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals who need real-time corporate bond data and in-depth analytics. Level 4 Linq, which is among one of the services from the bundled services that BondCliQ provides to its users, is a small browser-based window that can be integrated into any technology ecosystem and offers price data and transparent information on US corporate bonds which NASDAQ Levels 1 through 3 offers on US equities. It includes in-depth details such as intra-day evaluation pricing data, liquidity score, and CDX pricing data from S&P Global.  Another critical credit data tool offered by BondCliQ is Hyper Blotter, which delivers real-time data from institutional corporate bond dealers before the trade, helping the investor get easy access to crucial market information and making informed decisions based on multiple data sets such as corporate bond prices, TRACE transactions, CDS pricing, liquidity scores, etc. For HNI and institutional investors, BondCliQ is the guiding eye for appropriate investment decision-making to derive sweet returns in the long run.

Markets Insider Bonds Finder

With around 57 thousand+ bond data available at its disposal, this bond finder is also accessible for investors to find and screen the data of the bonds relevant to their investment criteria and yield requirements. The search results include crucial data points such as Moody’s rating, bid price, ask price, coupon, and yield, making the comparison more accessible for investors. Such screeners are great for novices new to bond trading as simple yet multiple filters would help them understand the impact of several factors on the price of the bonds and their analysis of every single bond.

Conclusion

Bonds are a significant financial instrument for investors who want to generate a consistent flow of income, and these screeners would not only help the investors make better decisions. Still, they would also expand their knowledge horizon about multiple factors that affect the volatility behind the prices of bonds influenced by various market data points. Some screeners are so advanced that they help investors build portfolios and suggest time horizons for such investments, taking it a level higher for bond investment enthusiasts. Investing is not a cakewalk, and whatever the screener suggests, one should interpret it cautiously and then dive deep into the ocean of the bonds market to make the most of it and get sweet pearl-like returns.

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