Sample Search: Provide a comprehensive statistical summary of the current trading value of a 30 year, 6 1/2% interest bond issued by the IBM Corp. on January 15, 1998.

NOTE:Looking up bond codes in Datastream is very similar to looking up equity codes. Use the following procedure to find information on exisiting bonds. To find information on expired bonds, see the Deadstocks Sample Search

To find Bond codes, enter CODE into the "Program Number" area in the main Datastream window. Press Enter.

You will be prompted to enter keywords to describe the item code you are looking for.

Enter IBM and press tab to skip down to the following lines.

Next, indicate that you are looking specifically for bonds by entering B.

On the following line, enter U$ for U.S. currency series.

Press Enter.

From the list of bonds on the new screen, select the item, IBM Corp. 1998 6 1/2% 1/15/28, with the code 246018.

Entering the macro for a bond is identical to that for an active stock. See the Equities Sample Search for a full description.

The Bonds section is a combination of corporate bonds and governmental bonds. Many governmental bonds can be found under the section for Interest Rates.

Datastream divides its bonds into two sections: bonds coming directly from a country and those covered by other organizations. The following countries have direct bond information:

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Datastream also obtains data from organizations such as JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, iBoxx, Salomon Smith Barney, Societe Generale, UBS Warburg, Reusters, and MSCI. Brady bonds are included.