Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Mergent to bring out bond indexes

Here's good news for fixed income investors. Mergent, formerly known as Moody's, and Ryan ALM have teamed up to produce benchmark indexes of bonds.

Mergent already provides a great service to dividend investors through keeping its index of Mergent Dividend Achievers -- those are companies that have increased their dividends every year. The Dividend Achievers index forms the basis for a number of exchange traded funds, making it easy for income investors to buy a large number of companies that have consecutively raised their dividends (for U.S. companies, at least 10 years in a row). It also has version of Canadian and companies from other parts of the world which have raised their dividends at least 5 years in a row.

The press release did not give any details about what the bond indexes will focus on. Obviously, bonds don't raise their interest payments every year (don't we wish!), so they must be considering some other measure of quality.

You can learn more at:

Mergent and Ryah ALM bond index partnership