Easiest way to track a PP holding actual bonds?

[jason]

Hello everyone,

I recently set up a PP with Fidelity and I bought 30 year treasuries for my bond allocation.  Unfortunately, Fidelity only updates the bond prices once per day, so when I check my portfolio during the day, it shows me the bond price from the previous day, not the current bond price.  I have to look around to find the bond price and then do my own calculations to see how far up or down it is.  I would much prefer to just log in somewhere and be able to see all of my holdings in a single view, showing how much I am up or down for the day, and how much I am up or down since purchase.  I tried setting up a portfolio on Yahoo Finance, and they don't allow me to enter in the CUSIP of my bonds, so that won't work either.  Does anyone know of a online portfolio I can set up that will allow me to enter in the CUSIP of my bonds as a holding and show real-time quotes?  If nothing like that is available, what is the easiest way to track the performance of a PP that holds 30 year treasuries?  I also own VTI and GTU/IAU, so I would like to be able to get real-time quotes for those at the same time.

Thanks!

[l82start]

this might help. http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/bo ... /#msg20819



  i found a good bond calculator spreadsheet here someplace when i switched to direct holding, but when i tried to find the one i use by searching i came up empty,  reading through the pp spreadsheet threads might turn it up, or possibly someone else remembers where it is posted

[Libertarian666]

All together now:

Don't look at your portfolio constantly!!! 

[jason]

this might help. http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/bo ... /#msg20819



  i found a good bond calculator spreadsheet here someplace when i switched to direct holding, but when i tried to find the one i use by searching i came up empty,  reading through the pp spreadsheet threads might turn it up, or possibly someone else remembers where it is posted

I don't plan on checking it every day, but when I do check it, I want to be able to see everything in one glance.  I saw a lot of  discussion about spreadsheets in previous posts but I had no idea that I could feed real-time data into a google doc spreadsheet.  This is very cool!  I have the entire spreadsheet set up except for one piece of information - I don't see a way to calculate the "Day's change" for my treasury bonds.  I found this formula for pulling the current price
=index(ImportHtml("http://fixedincome.fidelity.com/fi/FIBo ... USIP",1,10),5,2)
Does anyone know if there is a way to pull the previous day's price for treasury bonds, or anything else I can do in order to display the one day change?

Thanks!

[MediumTex]

Another idea is to take the value of your bonds on the day you buy them and divide that amount by that day's closing price of TLT and plug that number of shares into your spreadsheet and then just plug in the latest price of TLT to see the approximate value of your bond holdings.

[jason]

Another idea is to take the value of your bonds on the day you buy them and divide that amount by that day's closing price of TLT and plug that number of shares into your spreadsheet and then just plug in the latest price of TLT to see the approximate value of your bond holdings.

That's definitely a good idea, but I would prefer to get the actual bond price for the CUSIP of the particular treasuries I own, if possible, rather than an approximation.  If I could just find a website that showed the day's price and the previous day's price, or the day's change, then I might be able to scrape the info from the web page and pull it into the spreadsheet.

Thanks!

[Tortoise]

I found this formula for pulling the current price
=index(ImportHtml("http://fixedincome.fidelity.com/fi/FIBo ... USIP",1,10),5,2)
Does anyone know if there is a way to pull the previous day's price for treasury bonds, or anything else I can do in order to display the one day change?

Thanks!

Unfortunately I don't know of any websites that supply such historical bond price data based on CUSIP (only the current price). My Google searches have come up empty.

The next best thing might be to use the 30-year Treasury yield ticker symbol "TYX" to estimate your bond's price using the =GoogleFinance() and =price() functions in your Google docs spreadsheet.

Example for 4.375% T-bond maturing on 5/15/2041
Cell A1 (Today's date): 7/12/2013
Cell A2 (Previous trading day): 7/11/2013
Cell A3 (Maturity date): 5/15/2041
Cell A4 (Coupon %): 4.375
Cell A5 (TYX's current value): =GoogleFinance("TYX", "price")
Cell A6 (TYX's close on previous trading day): =GoogleFinance("TYX", "closeyest")
Cell A7 (Current bond price estimate) =price(A1, A3, A4/100, A5/1000, 100, 2)
Cell A8 (Yesterday's bond price estimate) =price(A2, A3, A4/100, A6/1000, 100, 2)
Cell A9 (% change in bond price estimate) =100*(A7-A8)/A8

This estimate should be reasonably accurate if your bond's maturity is close to 30 years since TYX is the 30-year yield.

[Kriegsspiel]

I just divide my purchase price and the current price in my spreadsheet, is that too Barneystyle for what you're talking about?

[WildAboutHarry]

Here is the Wall Street Journal's T-Bond and Note page.  Updated at 3PM Eastern time.  It can also display historical data.

The data is in a simple HTML table, easily extracted if you are so inclined.

[jason]

Here is the Wall Street Journal's T-Bond and Note page.  Updated at 3PM Eastern time.  It can also display historical data.

The data is in a simple HTML table, easily extracted if you are so inclined.

Thanks you for the link.  I think this would actually be doable (at least until the new treasuries are issued, in which case the formula would have to be tweaked to account for all of the bonds moving up one row) but the Wall Street Journal is only showing the bid and ask prices, not the actual bond prices, unfortunately.

[WildAboutHarry]

The bid and the ask are the actual prices, just reflecting the buy and sell sides of the transaction.  If you want to track value for your bonds, I would use the bid.

Here is Fidelity's bond pricing (the URL lists the CUSIP for a Treasury Note).  The Price & Performance tab shows the "Third Party Price".  You can plug in the CUSIP of your choice.  This price can also be easily extracted.

[julian]

If its one bond simply call fidelity and get the bid not the ask and plug into a calculator or excel.