Is there a widely recognized bond index?
Multiple overlapping indices exist covering various investment universes.  Almost all of the widely followed indices were originally created by Lehman Brothers and are now maintained by Barclays.  The broadest U.S. dollar based bond index is known as the Universal.  The Aggregate (often abbreviated Agg), which is historically the most popular index, more or less includes all bonds in the Universal rated investment grade.  The direct analog to the S&P 500 would be the U.S. Corporate Investment Grade index, which is tracked by the ETF LQD, and contains exactly what it sounds like. Citigroup (formerly Salomon Brothers) also has a competitor index to the Aggregate known as Broad Investment Grade (BIG), and Merrill Lynch (now Bank of America) has the Domestic Master. Multiple other indices also exist covering other bond markets, such as international (non-USD) bonds, tax-exempts (municipal bonds), securitized products, floating rate, etc. "The iShares Barclays Aggregate Bond - ticker AGG, is a ETF that may fit the bill for you. It's an intermediate term fund with annual expenses of .20%. It ""seeks investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the Barclays Capital U.S. Aggregate Bond Index""" Keep in mind that the bond market is dominated by US Treasury securities... if there were an S&P 500 for bonds, the US would take positions 1-400. Be careful that you understand what's in your bond funds -- you may not be as diversified as you think.
"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." "Looking at the list of bonds you listed, many of them are long dated. In short, in a rate rising environment (it's not like rates can go much lower in the foreseeable future), these bond prices will drop in general in addition to any company specific events occurred to these names, so be prepared for some paper losses.  Just because a bond is rated highly by credit agencies like S&P or Moody's does not automatically mean their prices do not fluctuate. Yes, there is always a demand for highly rated bonds from pension funds, mutual funds, etc. because of their investment mandates. But I would suggest looking beyond credit ratings and yield, and look further into whether these bonds are secured/unsecured and if secured, by what. Keep in mind in recent financial crisis, prices of those CDOs/CLOs ended up plunging even though they were given AAA ratings by rating agencies because some were backed by housing properties that were over-valued and loans made to borrowers having difficulties to make repayments. Hence, these type of ""bonds"" have greater default risks and traded at huge discounts. Most of them are also callable, so you may not enjoy the seemingly high yield till their maturity date. Like others mentioned, buying bonds outright is usually a big ticket item. I would also suggest reviewing your cash liquidity and opportunity cost as oppose to investing in other asset classes and instruments." FINRA lets you view recent trades, but as stated in the other answer bonds are illiquid and often do not trade frequently. Therefore recent trades prices are only a rough estimate of the current price that would be accepted. http://finra-markets.morningstar.com/BondCenter/Default.jsp "You quickly run into issues of what denotes ""similar"", and how to construct an appropriate index methodology. For example, do you group all CB arb funds together globally or separate them by country? Is long-bias equity long-short different to no-bias and variable-bias? Is a fund that concentrates on sovereign debt more like a macro fund or a fixed income fund? And so on. By definition, hedge funds try not to mimic their peers, with varying degrees of success.  Even if you get through that problem, how do you create the index? You may not be able to get return numbers for all the ""similar"" funds, and even if you do, how do you weight them? By AUM, or equal weight?  There are commercial indices out there (CSFB, Eurekahedge, Marhedge, Barclays, MSCI, etc) but there's no one accepted standard, and it's unlikely that there ever will be as a result. It's certainly interesting to look at your performance versus one of these indices, and many investors do monitor fund performance this way, but to demand strict benchmarking to one of them is a big ask..." I wrote one to check against the N3 to N6 bonds: http://capitalmind.in/2011/03/sbi-bond-yield-calculator/ Things to note: From wikipedia: In finance, a high-yield bond (non-investment-grade bond, speculative-grade bond, or junk bond) is a bond that is rated below investment grade at the time of purchase. These bonds have a higher risk of default or other adverse credit events, but typically pay higher yields than better quality bonds in order to make them attractive to investors. In terms of your second question, you have the causality backwards.  They are called junk bonds because they have a higher risk of default. To my knowledge, the only bond ever issued by a notable state into perpetuity was the Bank of England...and it was a miserable mess for all the obvious reasons.  Edit : They were called consuls, and it appears i was wrong about them being catastriphic for the BOE. I'm sorry, i guess i must be cruising the permabear backwoods or something. Here's some interesting links i found.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consols  http://www.immediateannuities.com/annuitymuseum/annuitycertificatesofthebankofengland/consolidatedannuities/  http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2012/03/debt-crisis-0?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/bl/hundredyearsofsolvency You could look up the P/E of an equivalent ETF, or break the ETF into components and look those up. Each index has its own methodology, usually weighted by market cap.  See here: http://www.amex.com/etf/prodInf/EtAllhold.jsp?Product_Symbol=DIA Dow Jones is a meaningless index that is only ever referenced in the media. It’s fundamentally flawed because the index constituents are weighted by share price, which is nonsensical (ie a $100 stock has a bigger impact on the index than a $50 stock) as opposed to the S&amp;P500 which is market cap weighted (a $100 billion company has a bigger impact than a $50 billion company). People in the investment industry focus on the S&amp;P index and pay zero attention to the Dow. John Bogle never said only buy the S&P 500 or any single index Q:Do you think the average person could safely invest for retirement and   other goals without expert advice -- just by indexing? A: Yes, there is a rule of thumb I add to that. You should start out   heavily invested in equities. Hold some bond index funds as well as   stock index funds. By the time you get closer to retirement or into   your retirement, you should have a significant position in bond index   funds as well as stock index funds. As we get older, we have less time   to recoup. We have more money to protect and our nervousness increases   with age. We get a little bit worried about that nest egg when it's   large and we have little time to recoup it, so we pay too much   attention to the fluctuations in the market, which in the long run   mean nothing. How much to pay Q: What's the highest expense ratio that one should pay for a   domestic equity fund? A: I'd say three-quarters of 1 percent maybe.   Q: For an international fund?  A: I'd say three-quarters of 1 percent.   Q: For a bond fund? A: One-half of 1 percent. But I'd shave that a little bit. For   example, if you can buy a no-load bond fund or a no-load stock fund,   you can afford a little more expense ratio, because you're not paying   any commission. You've eliminated cost No. 2.... I couldn't find historical data either, so I contacted Vanguard Canada and Barclays; Vanguard replied that  This index was developed for Vanguard, and thus historical information is available as of the inception of the fund. Unfortunately, that means that the only existing data on historical returns are in the link in your question. Vanguard also sent me a link to the methodology Barclay's uses when constructing this index, which you might find interesting as well.  I haven't heard from Barclays, but I presume the story is the same; even if they've been collecting data on Canadian bonds since before the inception of this index, they probably didn't aggregate it into an index before their contract with Vanguard (and if they did, it might be proprietary and not available free of charge). well, you know the problem lies with bonds maturing. The issue is not the function COMP but the security itself. You have to use existing total return indices that reflect a constant 10yr maturity position.      &gt;perpetually rolled the principal once the bond matured until the present?      That would mean your 10y becomes 7y, 5y, 3y, 1y, matured then you reinvest. Not the same.      Use SECF to find something like MLT1US10 Index or go to the IND page to see Merrill Lynch's bond indices. They're some of the best. Well, define shitty.   The assumption of perfect competition should imply that only the firms that can manage to breakeven while still owing outstanding bonds will continue to issue bonds in the first place, as the competing monetary systems themselves will become a competitive market of their own.  Information on the specific bond you're using as a medium of exchange/legal tender should be easily be easy to find or public information.  If it's kind of bondnote has existed for five years with no substantial changes, my safe bet is on that bond being worth something. Apple is currently the most valuable company in the world by market capitalisation and it has issued bonds for instance. Amazon have also issued bonds in the past as have Google. One of many reasons companies may issue bonds is to reduce their tax bill. If a company is a multinational it may have foreign earnings that would incur a tax bill if they were transferred to the holding company's jurisdiction. The company can however issue bonds backed by the foreign cash pile. It can then use the bond cash to pay dividends to shareholders. Ratings Agencies such as Moody's, Fitch and Standard & Poor's exist to rate companies ability to make repayments on debt they issue. Investors can read their reports to help make a determination as to whether to invest in bond issues. Of course investors also need to determine whether they believe the Ratings Agencies assesments. "Are you on Twitter? If so, the first thing I'd do is tweet this question to @Orbitz and/or @AmericanAir (AA). I'll edit it to be a bit nicer english-wise.  Tweeting (or Facebooking or Instgramming or ...) is one of the most effective ways to get customer service in 'edge' cases.  Explain your case in a nice, tight narrative that has the pertinent facts, why you should get an exception.  Social media tends to get results that you can't get just talking on the phone; in part because you're effectively talking with a higher-up person, and because you can make your case a bit more clearly. You can actually tweet this StackExchange question directly, or word it yourself in a tweet/FB post/etc.  On Twitter i'd link to here or somewhere else (too short), with something like ""@Orbitz @AmericanAir, you changed our trip and now it doesn't work with our special needs child.  Any way you can help us out? [link to this q or a blog post somewhere]"".   As far as a merchant dispute; it would realistically depend on the agreement you signed with Orbitz when you bought the tickets.  Likely it includes some flexibility for them to change your plans if the airline cancels the flight.  If it does, and they followed all of their policies correctly, then technically you shouldn't dispute the charge. It is possible that Chase might have some recourse on your behalf, though I don't think this qualifies for Trip Cancellation Insurance (Which you have through your Sapphire card ).  It might be worth calling them, just to see.  In the future, I would recommend booking through their site - not only do you get 25% bonus rewards when you use miles through there, which often is enough to offset the advantages of discount travel sites, but they're quite good at helping deal with these sorts of problems (as Sapphire is one of their top cards)."