Can anyone give suggestions of good Fixed Income portfolio tracking software?
explain what you mean by tracking Edit: As in, why not Bloomberg ?
Bloomberg is too cumbersome. It never ties out correctly with my gains/losses. I can’t see amorized cost, it does not allow for a future cash flow analysis given a roll-off of the portfolio. All the pricing is not in there either. There are limitations to the kinds of securities it can handle.
NSZ, try yieldbook Wilshire Axiom Barra do something also Charles river Yb is one of the cheaper ones, takes a while to learn how to use it. Most things can be done in a spreadsheet with the Bloomberg add in
Yeah except when Bloomberg doesnt have a price for the bond… or its 2 months old. All depends on teh pricing services you have or you can use the Generic from bloomberg, but like I said some bonds will not price or have very stale prices.
IDC BondEdge (say the name fast 3 time) Thompson also has a product for this that I saw once. Looked interesting.
Barra’s FI product is called Cosmos, although I’ve never used it.
All the software companies get you with the data requirements. Most of the software I looked at, Yield Book and Bond Edge run between $30k and $50k per year. Its funny because you can actually get daily bond pricing from Capital IQ. The data is from The Financial Times which owns Interactive Data.
Do any of these track (“track”?) derivatives? Especially swaps and options. This would be in the context of an insurance company that’s almost 100% fixed income but is looking into expanding into the derivative universe. Our company already has Bloomberg and Yieldbook, but I personally have no familiarity with either. Maybe one of them already does this?
Drz: Fixed Income derivs, or do you mean the whole universe? I know YB has support for CDS, CDX, and certain types of options (swaptions, options on futures). Best to ask your sales rep.
How much does YB run?
I work with Yield Book. It’s really not fun to learn. Completely not intuitive user-interface. It looks like a software that was developed in the late 80s and since then just got some more features, but no overhaul that made it any easier to use. Once you get into it it’s okay though, but the learning curve is steep. We’re evaluating Barclay’s Point system (formerly Lehman’s) at the moment. Seems pretty good so far, but runs at at least twice the cost of Yield Book. When it was still Lehman you could pay for it with soft dollars, but not anymore. I’m also not sure that would have been a better deal for you as a customer.
BondEdge is the market leader in bond portfolio software Yieldbook is good but only covers some not all bonds PolyPaths offer an Intex data link
Lehman switched to charged when they ran into trouble. It wasn’t a Barclays decision Klarsolo Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I work with Yield Book. It’s really not fun to > learn. Completely not intuitive user-interface. It > looks like a software that was developed in the > late 80s and since then just got some more > features, but no overhaul that made it any easier > to use. Once you get into it it’s okay though, but > the learning curve is steep. > > We’re evaluating Barclay’s Point system (formerly > Lehman’s) at the moment. Seems pretty good so > far, but runs at at least twice the cost of Yield > Book. When it was still Lehman you could pay for > it with soft dollars, but not anymore. I’m also > not sure that would have been a better deal for > you as a customer.
I’ve used BondEdge, Charles River, and Bloomberg and none of them ever do what you want. The chart you need is always different from the stock one they provide, the accounting never ties cause of that one topside entry you made, you need to upload tons of prices, etc that is life. I guess BE was my favorite but it feels really clunky and not fun. All good for basic tracking…just be prepared to spend time maintaining the data and doing ad hoc analysis in Excel.
Barclays only started approaching us about the fee-based POINT system a short time ago. It was rather unexpected. Given the amount of business we give them and the enormous fee they’re asking for, they can go and f(*& themselves.
I wonder if it is possible to use Bloomberg API to build something pretty basic and dynamic in Excel. What do you guys think.
I’ve done this, and I like it. That way you are already in Excel, but pulling active prices/whatever from Bloomberg, and can do ad hoc analytics in Excel anytime you get hit with a request. I hated always having to Export from BondEdge and do ad hoc in Excel.
purealpha I’d like to see what can be done. Can we chat at some point?
Bump… any new thoughts? Especially re: Yield Book vs. BondEdge?