How to Find Ratings for Municipal Bonds

There are many sources you can use to find municipal bond ratings. Many of them are online. Use these steps to find the best ones.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Steps for Finding Ratings for Municipal Bonds

1. Create a list of municipal bonds you're interested in. This list may be generated from local sources, suggestions made to you by friends, or research you do online for information.

2. Search an online database that contains municipal bond information and ratings. Several of these databases are Bloomber.com, Global Financial Data, and Mergent Online.

3. Search web resources that offer municipal bond and other investment ratings information. These resources can be found with a keyword search for "web resources municipal bond ratings." You can also check out these web resources for bond ratings: Bond Market Association; Bond Market Commentary; Bonds Online; BradyNet; Buying Bills, Notes, Bonds and Savings Bonds; Corporate Finance Live; Encyclopedia of Finance; Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; Kiplinger Online; NASD BondInfo and Yahoo! Bond Center.

4. Visit your local public or university library. Research municipal bond ratings with a financial reference book or collection such as "Dictionary of Finance and Investment Terms," "Standard & Poor's Guide to Personal Finance," or "Business Rankings Annual." You could also search for information with "Bond Tables," "Bond Tables of Probably Future Yields," or the "Bond Guide."

5. Contact a bond rating agency such as Standard & Poor's, Fitch Bond Rating Agency, or Long Term Bond Ratings.

6. Conduct your research using the list of municipal bonds you made earlier.

Tips & Warnings

• There are a lot of free bond rating sites online.
• Use the Internet for your research.
• Use the reference materials at your local public or university library to find municipal bond rating information.
• All investments have some risk involved.
• Ratings don't guarantee a return.