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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stephen L. Smith who wrote (74877)	1/30/2000 10:39:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Respond to of 132070

Steve, Bonds of places like Germany, Great Britain Gilts, Switzerland, Belgium, etc. are all rated very highly, above any AAA corporate. German bonds often rate above our own Treasury securities on a quality basis. Swiss bonds are great, but not readily available. I haven't bought Euro bonds, yet, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, but they are also highly regarded, probably a notch below German bonds but still pretty darned good. The only way I know to buy them is through a European bank or broker. I haven't found the bond shops of major US brokers to be of much use. They can certainly acquire them, but the net price stinks. I haven't tried big US banks like Citibank. But if you contact a big European bank, or even a quality small one, they seem to be able to get trades done fairly easily. I've had good luck with Bank Von Ernst, Credit Suisse, Bank Paribas, and a couple of others. However, I should mention that I have a huge advantage over many people. When I opened accounts with these folks, I had just retired as the portfolio manager/trader of the third largest mutual fund and third largest bond fund in the world. Though I made it clear we were talking about my crummy personal account and not the Godzilla Fund I once managed, I may have been allowed to play for smaller amounts at lower spreads than the average investor. I don't know if this is true, because I could only be me when I signed up, but I have heard from other folks at other banks who say the minimums required for a decent priced offering were too high for their budgets, and sometimes they had better budgets than I have or had.