Bond
A loan you can trade.
A debt instrument issued by a government, agency, or corporation. The issuer promises to pay periodic interest (the coupon) and return the principal at a fixed date (maturity). The bond trades between investors at a price that moves with interest rates, credit perception, and time to maturity.
Coupon
The bond's stated interest rate.
Coupon is the annual interest payment as a percent of face value. A 5% coupon on a $1,000 face-value bond pays $50/year (usually split into two semi-annual payments). Note: coupon does NOT equal yield — yield depends on the price you pay.
Coupon kind
Fixed, Floating, Zero, or Step-up.
Fixed pays the same rate every period. Floating resets periodically (e.g., SOFR + 200bp). Zero pays no coupon — return comes entirely from price appreciation toward par. Step-up pays escalating coupons on a schedule.
Maturity
When the principal comes back.
The scheduled date the issuer repays the bond's face value. Bonds nearing maturity behave more like cash; long-dated bonds are more sensitive to rate moves. Some bonds are perpetual — see below.
Yield to maturity (YTM)
The annualized return if held to maturity.
The single discount rate that makes a bond's future cash flows (coupons + principal) equal its current price. A bond priced at par with a 5% coupon yields ~5%. A bond at a discount yields more than its coupon; at a premium, less. YTM assumes you reinvest coupons at the same rate — a useful approximation, not a forecast.
Modified duration
Price sensitivity to a 1% rate change.
Roughly: how many percent the bond's price moves when its yield moves by 1 percentage point. A 7-year modified duration means the bond drops ~7% if yields rise 100bp, gains ~7% if they fall 100bp. The primary measure of interest-rate risk.
Convexity
The curvature of the price-yield relationship.
Duration is a linear approximation. Real bonds curve — convexity measures that curvature. Positive convexity is good for the holder: prices rise more on rate cuts than they fall on rate hikes of the same size. Higher coupon and shorter maturity reduce convexity.
Clean price vs dirty price
Quoted price vs price including accrued interest.
Clean price excludes the interest that has accrued since the last coupon payment — it's the headline number you see quoted. Dirty price (or full price) is what you actually pay: clean price + accrued interest. The price column in the screener is clean.
Par value
Face value, the principal repaid at maturity.
Almost always 100 (or its equivalent in the bond's currency). Bond prices are quoted as a percent of par: a price of 98.50 means 98.5% of face value. Above 100 is a premium; below 100, a discount.
Investment Grade (IG) vs High Yield (HY)
Credit-rating tier division.
IG = rated BBB-/Baa3 or better by major agencies. Considered low-default-risk. HY (also called junk or speculative grade) is BB+/Ba1 or below — higher default risk, higher yield as compensation. The IG/HY line drives a lot of institutional buying behavior — many funds can only hold IG.
Composite rating
A single rating reconciling multiple agencies.
S&P, Moody's, and Fitch use different alphabets (AAA, Aaa, etc.). The composite rating reconciles them into one rating shown throughout SherpaBonds, ignoring 'NR' (not rated) entries when another agency has a real rating to share.
G-spread
Bond yield above the same-tenor government curve.
How much extra yield the bond pays over the risk-free sovereign curve for the same tenor. Expressed in basis points. A 10-year corporate yielding 5.25% when the 10-year sovereign yields 4.00% has a G-spread of +125bp. The cleanest measure of credit risk premium.
±BP (in the screener)
Bond yield minus a reference benchmark, in basis points.
How much extra yield the bond offers relative to a benchmark, in basis points. The benchmark depends on the bond's currency — a sovereign curve where one is available, or a result-set comparison otherwise. Useful as a 'richer or cheaper than peers' signal.
Basis point (bp)
One hundredth of a percent.
100bp = 1.00%. Used because percent moves in yields are too coarse — bond traders quote spreads and rate changes in basis points. A 25bp Fed cut means 0.25% lower.
Bullet bond
Standard bond — single principal payment at maturity.
Pays periodic coupons, then repays the full face value on the maturity date. Contrasts with amortizing bonds (principal repaid gradually) and perpetuals (no principal payment).
Perpetual bond
A bond with no scheduled redemption date.
Pays coupons indefinitely. Common in subordinated bank capital (AT1 CoCos, Tier 1 Sukuk) and some hybrid corporate preferreds. Usually callable on a schedule but the issuer is not obligated to call. SherpaBonds detects perpetual bonds and labels them clearly throughout the app — duration and yield-to-maturity math are skipped for them.
Senior unsecured
Most common corporate-bond seniority class.
Has a claim on the issuer's assets behind secured creditors but ahead of subordinated debt and equity. The default assumption for new corporate issues unless specifically structured otherwise.
Subordinated
Lower-ranking debt — paid only after senior creditors.
In a bankruptcy, subordinated holders get paid after senior holders are made whole. Riskier; compensated with a higher coupon. Junior subordinated and Tier 1 capital are the lowest-ranking flavors and often perpetual.
ISIN / CUSIP / FIGI / LEI
Different IDs for the same bond.
ISIN (12 chars, e.g. US912828W971) is the global standard. CUSIP (9 chars) is US-centric and forms the core of an ISIN. FIGI (12 chars, Bloomberg-issued) provides a free identifier. LEI is the legal-entity ID of the issuer, not the security. SherpaBonds shows the most useful identifier given availability.
Amount outstanding
Total principal of this bond issue still in circulation.
How much of this specific bond has been issued and not yet redeemed. Bigger issues are usually more liquid. Reported in the bond's native currency.
Tenor
Years between today and maturity.
Synonym for years-to-maturity. A '10-year bond' issued 3 years ago has a tenor of 7y today. Tenor buckets (0–3y, 3–7y, 7–15y, 15y+) are commonly used to compare yield curves and slice portfolios.
Issuer curve
An issuer's bonds plotted by yield vs maturity.
Each bond from a single issuer becomes a dot — yield on the y-axis, tenor on the x-axis. The shape reveals whether the issuer's curve is upward-sloping (normal), flat, or inverted, and exposes any specific bonds that look cheap or rich relative to siblings on the same curve.
Sector
Industry grouping of an issuer.
SherpaBonds uses a simplified taxonomy (Financial, Industrial, Real Estate, Utilities, Government, Government-related, etc.). The mapping handles synonyms — Banking, Insurance, and Diversified Financial Services all roll up into Financial.
Market Signal
An institutional fund that holds bonds.
The user-facing name for the institutional funds whose holdings power Sherpa Signal. Each tracked Market Signal has a public disclosure cadence; their aggregate positioning forms the institutional footprint of every bond they touch.