Liquidity in the Over-the-Counter Market for Corporate Bonds

Abstract

Trading activity varies widely across individual corporate bond issues. Thirty-five percent of bonds do not change hands at all in the course of an average month, while some bonds see multiple transactions every trading day. This paper utilizes newly available transaction data to examine the factors associated with corporate bond liquidity and demonstrates that trading activity depends upon the relative visibility of the bond issue, the degree to which investor opinions regarding company value differ, and the likelihood of private information regarding the bond issue existing in the market.