Financial Planning

[engerim]

Hi,

I'm a South-African citizen and I want to buy US treasuries. I tried to buy some at Yuanda where I have an account and some money in stocks, but they said that the law changed recently and that's it's now illegal to buy it through a bank.

As I'm not an American citizen I can't buy it online.

Do you know where someone like me would be able to buy some T-bills?

Thanks

Did you consider to buy a Bond ETF or Certificate?
Barclays iShares has quite a lot of those and even inflation protected TICP's (iShares $ TIPS).

[Edgar Allen]

Apologies again - I though this thread had died (but am happy it hasn't)

I'll see what I can find out about buying T-bills there are a couple of possibles - not sure how responsive my guys are going to be this close to Xmas but we'll see.

Edit: http://individuals.interactivebrokers.c ... suries.htm
looks as though you can do this through interactive brokers?

[engerim]

Edit: http://individuals.interactivebrokers.c ... suries.htm
looks as though you can do this through interactive brokers?

Sounds like an option.
Would take a deposit of 4000 to 10000 USD first to open an account, no?
But that could be put into T-Bills

[Edgar Allen]

Absolutely - I opened my account with 10K US$ and then put the lot into (cough) Citibank stock last December.....never said I get everything right!

If you have less than 10K investing directly in T-bills may not be the smartest move IMHO.

[Opihiman]

Absolutely - I opened my account with 10K US$ and then put the lot into (cough) Citibank stock last December.....never said I get everything right!

If you have less than 10K investing directly in T-bills may not be the smartest move IMHO.

If you knew what you were doing, one can do as good or better with 10yr note futures and/or options.

[Optimus Prime]

EA: How's business? Will you be in TPE soon? Am interested to discuss more on this. PM me and let's set something up!

[Edgar Allen]

I'll PM you.

Not sure when I will be in town, have a trip to Kaosiung planned later this month but Taipei seems to be eluding me at present.

[Chewycorns]

I don't know much about bonds, but can consumers take advantage of this? A 9 percent coupon seems too good to be true

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE66C0IP20100713


Unicredit's 500 million euro ($629.8 million) issue is set to have a coupon of around 9 percent, according to sources close to the deal.

[headhonchoII]

If it's too good to be true it usually is..risk premium and all that. I read that India has a high interest rate due to inflation...can you buy their bonds?

[Edgar Allen]

As far as I can see this is pseudo capital backed by stock that could become junk - hence the high coupon.

This is likely to get bought in big blocks by people like Pension funds and Life Insurers who want to manage large sums of capital safely and put smaller blocks into high yielding high risk instruments like this

There are certainly safer investments that consistently return 9% plus but unfortunately not available to the man on the street in affordable blocks.