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Fixed Income (Bond Market) Interview Preparation



Question: What is a political risk for a bond?

Answer: A bond while invested is non-taxable but later on some political decision the bond is declared as taxable. Then yield on the bond would be highly affected and adversely affect the bond price.


Question: How municipal non-taxable bond would be affected if tax rate goes down?

Answer: Suppose you invested in a non-table bond, but tax rated reduces later on it would affect the bond price. Because the main characteristic of the bond is that it is non-taxable. But tax reduces by the municipalities. Which would affect the price of the bond and that reduces and finally yield on the bond would be affected as well.


Question: What is the legal risk on the non-taxable bonds?

Answer: Bonds are exposed to two types of political/legal risk you can also say tax risk.
- If federal income tax rate will be reduced. If tax rate is high, the greater is the value of the tax-exempt nature of a municipal bond. If tax rates reduced, the price of a tax-exempt municipal bond will decline.
- Suppose you invested in municipal bond which is tax exempt eventually will be declared taxable Which results is a loss of the tax exemption, the bond will decline in value in order to provide a yield comparable to similar taxable bonds.


Question: Can you give some example of the even risk for the bond investor?

Answer: Sometime, an issuer/borrower does not make interest and principal payments because of
- A natural accident
- Industrial accident
- A takeover
- Corporate restructuring.
These risks are referred to as event risk. Few examples
- Covid-19 affected the market and people are not able to make payment.
- Cancellation of nuclear power plant.
- Cancellation of the big water project.
- Cancellation of toll road constructions etc.

Related Questions


Question: What happen when coupon on the bond is less than the required yield?

Question: What do you mean by bond is being sold at premium?

Question: Why do you see bond price is higher than par value?

Question: What would happen when you buy a bond either on premium or discount and required yield does not changes. And it is reaching towards maturity?

Question: What all are the common cases for which bond price changes?

Question: How does investor make money on zero coupon bonds?

Question: Can you give an example of calculating a price of a bond with zero coupon?

Question: Does it affect if you buy the bond between coupon dates, means bond settlement date is not as coupon date?