Which field should I use for getting the income yield of this bond ETF?
What you want is the distribution yield, which is 2.65. You can see the yield on FT as well, which is listed as 2.64. The difference between the 2 values is likely to be due to different dates of updates. http://funds.ft.com/uk/Tearsheet/Summary?s=CORP:LSE:USD
"Yes, the ""effective"" and ""market"" rates are interchangeable. The present value formula will help make it possible to determine the effective interest rate. Since the bond's par value, duration, and par interest rate is known, the coupon payment can be extracted. Now, knowing the price the bond sold in the market, the duration, and the coupon payment, the effective market interest rate can be extracted.  This involves solving large polynomials. A less accurate way of determining the interest rate is using a yield shorthand. To extract the market interest rate with good precision and acceptable accuracy, the annual coupon derived can be divided by the market price of the bond." Yup. What I wanted to know was where they are pulling it up from. Have casually used Google finance for personal investments, but they suck at corp actions. Not sure if they provide free APIs, but that would probably suck too! :D "Negative Yields on Bonds is opposite of Getting profit on your investment. This is some kind of new practice from world wide financial institute.  the interest rate is -0.05% for ten years. So a $100,000 bond under   those terms would be ""discounted"" to $100,501, give or take. No, actually what you are going to get out from this investment is after 10 years when this investment is mature for liquidation, you will get return not even your principle $100,000 , but ( (Principle $100,000) minus (Negative Yields @ -0.05) Times ( 10 Years ) ) assume the rates are on simple annual rate.  Now anyone may wander why should someone going to buy this kind of investment where I am actually giving away not only possible profit also losing some of principle amount!  This might looks real odd, but there is other valid reason for issuing / investing on such kind of bond.  From investor prospective: Every asset has its own 'expense' for keeping ownership of it. This is also true for money/currency depending on its size. And other investment possibility and risk factor. The same way people maintain checking account with virtually no visible income vs. Savings account where bank issue some positive rate of interest with various time factor like annually/half-yearly/monthly. People with lower level of income but steady on flow choose savings where business personals go for checking one. Think of Millions of Ideal money with no secure investment opportunity have to option in real. Option one to keeping this large amount of money in hand, arranging all kind of security which involve extra expense, risk and headache where Option two is invest on bond issued by Government of country. Owner of that amount will go for second one even with negative yields on bonds where he is paying in return of security and risk free grantee of getting it back on time.  On Issuing Government prospective: Here government actually want people not to keep money idle investing bonds, but find any possible sector to invest which might profitable for both Investor + Grater Community ultimately country.  This is a basic understanding on issue/buy/selling of Negative interest bearing bond on market.   Hope I could explain it here. Not to mention, English is not my 1st language at all. So ignore my typo, grammatical error and welcome to fix it.  Cheers!" The simple answer is technically bonds don't have earnings, hence no P/E. What I think the OP is really asking how do I compare stock and bond ETFs. Some mature stocks exhibit very similar characteristics to bonds, so at the margin if you are considering investing between 2 such investments that provide stable income in the form of dividends, you might want to use the dividend/price ratio (D/P) of the stock and compare it to the dividend yield of the bond. If you go down to the basics, both the bond and the stock can be considered  the present value of all future expected cashflows. The cash that accrues to the owner of the stock is future dividends and for the bond is the coupon payments. If a company were to pay out 100% of its earnings, then the dividend yield D/P would be conveniently E/P. For a company with P/E of 20 that paid out it's entire earnings, one would expect D/P = 1/20 = 5% This serves as a decent yard stick in the short term ~ 1 year to compare mature stock etfs with stable prospects vs bond funds since the former will have very little expected price growth (think utilities), hence they both compete on the cashflows they throw off to the investor. This comparison stops being useful for stock ETFs with higher growth prospects since expected future cashflows are much more volatile. This comparison is also not valid in the long term since bond ETFs are highly sensitive to the yield curve (interest rate risk) and they can move substantially from where they are now. The point of a total return index is that it already has accounted for the capital gains + coupon income. If you want to calculate it yourself you'll have to find the on-the-run 10y bond for each distinct period then string them together to calc your total return. Check XLTP if they have anything Gundlach shared a chart that showed how investors in European “junk” bonds are willing to accept the same no-default return as they are for U.S. Treasury bonds. In other words, the yield on European “junk” bonds is about the same—between 2 percent and 3 percent—as the yield on U.S. Treasuries, even though the risk profile of the two could not be more different.  Sounds like a strong indicator to me. How might this play out in the US? "Bonds might not be simple, but in general there are only a few variables that need to be understood: bid, coupon (interest) rate, maturity, and yield.  Bond tables clearly lay those out, and if you're talking about government bonds a lot of things (like convertibles) don't apply (although default is still a concern). This might be overly simplistic, but I view ETF's primarily as an easy way to bring somewhat esoteric instruments (like grain futures) into the easily available markets of Nasdaq and the NYSE. That they got ""enhanced"" with leveraged funds and the such is interesting, but perhaps not the original intent of the instrument.  Complicating your situation a bit more is the fee that gets tacked onto the ETF. Even Vanguard government bond funds hang out north of 0.1%. That's not huge, but it's not particularly appealing either considering that (unlike rounding up live cattle futures), it's not that much work to buy US government bonds, so the expense might not seem worth it to someone who's comfortable purchasing the securities directly.  I'd be interested to see someone else's view on this, but in general I'd say that if you know what you want and know how to buy it, the government bond ETF becomes a lot less relevant as the liquidity offered (including the actual ""ease of transacting"") seem to to be the biggest factors in favor. From Investopedia's description: The bond ETF is an exciting new addition to the bond market, offering   an excellent alternative to self-directed investors who, looking for   ease of trading and increased price transparency, want to practice   indexing or active bond trading. However, bond ETFs are suitable for   particular strategies. If, for instance, you are looking to create a   specific income stream, bond ETFs may not be for you. Be sure to   compare your alternatives before investing." I've recently discovered that Morningstar provides 5yr avgs of a few numbers, including dividend yield, for free.  For example, see the right-hand column in the 'Current Valuation' section, 5th row down for the 5yr avg dividend yield for PG: http://financials.morningstar.com/valuation/price-ratio.html?t=PG&region=usa&culture=en-US Another site that probably has this, and alot more, is YCharts.  But that is a membership site so you'll need to join (and pay a membership fee I believe.)   YCharts is supposedly pretty good for long-term statistical information and trend graphs for comparing and tracking stocks. "Since you want to know exactly what ""yield"" means, let's get all the details of the security down first. Treasury Bills are 0-1 year and do not pay interest/coupons. The yield comes from buying the T-Bill at a discount. For example, you buy a T-Bill for $99 and it pays $100 when it matures, and the yield over that holding period is 1/99. When people talk about ""yield"" they are generally talking about annualized yield unless stated otherwise.  Treasury Notes are 2-10 years. They pay interest semi-annually. Treasury Bonds are 20-30 years and they also pay interest semi-annually. Again, ""yield"" is typically the annualized yield, or the two semi-annual interest payments added together (without compounding). These have interest payments so they are typically sold at par. They may trade a premium/discount afterwards.  TIPS pay a constant coupon rate, but the principal is adjusted up and down with inflation." what do you mean exactly?  Do you have a future target price and projected future dividend payments and you want the present value (time discounted price) of those? Edit: The DCF formula is difficult to use for stocks because the future price is unknown.  It is more applicable to fixed-income instruments like coupon bonds.  You could use it but you need to predict / speculate a future price for the stock. You are better off using the standard stock analysis stuff: Learn Stock Basics - How To Read A Stock Table/Quote The P/E ratio and the Dividend yield are the two most important.  The good P/E ratio for a mature company would be around 20.  For smaller and growing companies, a higher P/E ratio is acceptable.  The dividend yield is important because it tells you how much your shares grow even if the stock price stays unchanged for the year. HTH "Hello! I am working on a project where I am trying to determine the profit made by a vendor if they hold our funds for 5 days in order to collect the interest on those funds during that period before paying a third party.  Currently I am doing ""Amount x(Fed Funds Rate/365)x5"" but my output seems too low. Any advice?" I'll have to think it through, but at the very least unless your debt is a pure discount instrument and  you are using cash flows, some if that money IS getting paid during those 5 years. As in if you are using earnings, they pay p&amp;i. Or if earnings and pure discount instruments, then amortized interest (I think, been a while).  You see the actual numbers and know what you are trying to do, but I'm a little lost. Are you building a discount model with a multiple terminal and using ev as the multiple? Are you using free cash flow to firm for the discounting? I'm guessing that's the case. In this case the market interest rate is the discount rate that sets equal the market price (current value) of the bond to its present value. To find the market interest rate which is also referred to as promised yield YTM you would have solve for the interest rate in the bond price formula A market price of bond is the sum of discounted coupons and the terminal value of the bond. Most spreadsheet programs and calculators have a RATE function that makes possible finding this market interest rate. First see this for finding a coupon paying bond price The coupon payments are discounted so is the par value of the bond and sum of such discounts is the market price of the bond. The TVM functions in Excel and calculators make this possible using the following equation Let us take your data, 9% $100,000 coupon with 5 years remaining to maturity with market interest rate of 10%. Bonds issued in the US mostly pay two coupons per year. Thus we are finding the present value of 10 coupons each worth $4500 and par value of $100,000. The semi-annual market interest rate is 10%/2 or 5% The negative sign indicate money going out of hand Now solving for RATE is only possible using numerical methods and the RATE function is programmed using Newton-Raphson method to find one of the roots of the bond price equation. This rate will be the periodic rate in this case semi-annual rate which you have to multiply by 2 to get the annual rate. Do remember there is a difference between annual nominal rate and an annualized effective rate. To find the market interest rate  If you don't have Excel or a financial calculator then you may opt to use my version of these financial functions in this JavaScript library tadJS "The first thing that it is important to note here is that the examples you have given are not individual bond prices.  This is what is called the ""generic"" bond price data, in effect a idealised bond with the indicated maturity period.  You can see individual bond prices on the UK Debt Management Office website. The meaning of the various attributes (price, yield, coupon) remains the same, but there may be no such bond to trade in the market.  So let's take the example of an actual UK Gilt, say the ""4.25% Treasury Gilt 2019"".  The UK Debt Management Office currently lists this bond as having a maturity date of 07-Mar-2019 and a price of GBP 116.27.  This means that you will pay 116.27 to purchase a bond with a nominal value of GBP 100.00.  Here, the ""nominal price"" is the price that HM Treasury will buy the bond back on the maturity date.   Note that the title of the bond indicates a ""nominal"" yield of 4.25%.  This is called the coupon, so here the coupon is 4.25%.  In other words, the treasury will pay GBP 4.25 annually for each bond with a nominal value of GBP 100.00.  Since you will now be paying a price of GBP 116.27 to purchase this bond in the market today, this means that you will be paying 116.27 to earn the nominal annual interest of 4.25.  This equates to a 3.656% yield, where 3.656% = 4.25/116.27.   It is very important to understand that the yield is not the whole story.  In particular, since the bond has a nominal value of GBP100, this means that as the maturity date approaches the market price of the bond will approach the nominal price of 100. In this case, this means that you will witness a loss of capital over the period that you hold the bond.  If you hold the bond until maturity, then you will lose GBP 16.27 for each nominal GBP100 bond you hold.  When this capital loss is netted off the interest recieved, you get what is called the gross redemption yield.  In this case, the gross redemption yield is given as approximately 0.75% per annum. NB.  The data table you have included clearly has errors in the pricing of the 3 month, 6 month, and 12 month generics." "A (very) simplified bond-pricing equation goes thus: Fair_Price: {Face_Value * (1 + Interest - Expected_Market_Return) ^ (Years_To_Maturity)} * P(Company_Will_Default_Before_Maturity) To reiterate, that is a very simplified model. But it allows us to demonstrate the 3 key factors that drive ""Fair"" Value: The interest relative to the current market rate. If your AAA bond yields 1%, but an equally-good AAA bond currently sells at 3% in the market, then the ""Equivalent"" value is the face value minus 2% (1% - 3%) for every year to maturity.  Years to maturity. Because 1) is multiplied for every year to maturity, longer-dated bonds are more sensitive to changes in market rates. If your bond yields 2% less than market but matures in a year, then it's worth $98, but if it matures in 56 years, then it's only worth 0.98^56 = $32. Conversely, if your bond yields more than the market rate, then its' price will be greater than face value. The company might default on the debt. If a Bond has a ""Fair"" Value of $100, but you think there's a 50% chance that the company will default, then it's only worth $50. In fact, it can be worth even less because getting paid on a defaulted bond can often take time and/or money and/or lawyers. In your case, because your bond matures in 56 years but yields ~5% (well above the current market rate), for it to be below Face value implies a strong probability of default, or a strong belief that market returns will be above 5% over the next 56 years."