I bought some GM Bonds at a very good price near the lows a couple of weeks ago and the position is at a nice profit but I find I cannot get filled trying to liquidate at a decent price. _ They are GM 8 3/8 07/15/33. IB uses ValuBond / BondPoint. I have had an open limit to sell at 17 for some time and it never gets filled. Typically the range is say 15 to 24. On Friday, it closed at 22 but my order to sell at 17 was still not filled. Also, my order price does not show on the bid-ask quotes. It will show like 15 for the bid, 22 for the ask, ignoring my ask of 17. IB says that only dealer quotes are displayed (although they say they are working on a future enhancement to include customer orders in the bid ask quotes). They say that my order should be available to ValuBond users, but it is very odd that, if so, people are paying much more and ignoring my offer. Does this make sense or is something wrong here? Would I be able to get better execution at a more specialized bond dealer?
Clearly , the bond market is still a good old boys racket. How else are those crooks gonna make a fancy living, if they can't rob the ignorant? I stay away from bond trading for that reason.
======================= comINTC; a] I am not the expert on GM or Citigroup, but sold them both short; & enjoyed that-they deserved every downtick they got.LOL z]Have you tried to sell @ 15 limit, you said 15-24/bid ask; 22 maybe the ask-price they filled.Sure sounds like 22 was not a bid price?? Was that non fill blessing in disguise-bids going up????? Huge spread,15-24,wow that is more than most GM options /bid/ask ; or GM stock. Some derivatives you cant split the bid /ask on exit; even if they split the bid ask on entry. Some will [sort of split it ]if the market reverses on you....
Thanks I do not know most of the answers. But, miracle of miracles, my open sell limit order (which I had now set to 16) finally was filled today at 16, which is sort of amazing since the high of the day was 16.05 and the low was 13.25. It was filled at time 15:05 so maybe dealers had closed early for the day and they actually had to fall back to matching customer orders directly! Or maybe IB fixed something. I actually did make a decent profit on this trade, having bought most of the bonds on a limit order the day the original bailout failed in the House. But indeed it seems extremely difficult to trade bonds........