How to Short a Bond

Does anyone know how to short a bond in a personal account without a broker (i.e. an interactive brokers or e-trade account)? Will most brokers allow it? What are the margin requirements like?

There is a lot of discussion surrounding various trading strategies and opinions on different asset classes around here, but sometimes the actual execution is not clear. Please do not write back "short an ETF."

6 Comments
 

There's no great way to do this with an e-trade account unfortunately ... I don't know if you've explored this other option, but have you thought about shorting an ETF? I'll be interested to hear others comment as well.

 

What kind of bond? Corporate or government?

You can trade treasury futures. I feel like a lot general bond market trading is really interest rate trading, so you could trade interest futures as well: http://tfc-charts.w2d.com/interest_bonds.html

No idea how you would short corporate or even munis. My guess is that you would have to be an institutional investor with access to credit-default swaps on those bonds.

 

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