I remember the first business reporting job I did years ago, covering the debt securities market for a specialist wire service. It was a stretch picking up the market jargon and economics, but the thing I really remember is watching the guys who supplied the commentary, who were mostly ex-bond traders.
I could write about a deal and reckon I’d made a decent fist of summing it up, but when I watched them give interviews on Reuters’ TV channel it was obvious I was miles off. If I could get to within 50 or 100 basis points (bps) of where a bond should price, they would get within five bps and know why the lead managers had mis-judged the swaps market and gone for the wrong maturity.
