Mergent FISD Antti Alakiuttu Department of Finance
Slide 2
Mergent FISD Mergent, Inc. A provider of business and financial
information on publicly and privately listed companies Descriptive
and fundamental information Pricing and corporate action data Terms
and conditions data on corporate and municipal bonds One of most
detailed and used fixed- income data sources
Slide 3
Mergent FISD Mergent Fixed Income Securities Database (FISD) A
comprehensive database of publicly offered U.S. bonds for academics
U.S. corporate and U.S. government From short- to long-term i.e.,
notes and bonds Over 140,000 issues A source of asset
characteristics
Slide 4
Mergent FISD CUSIP based Data/information of issue can be
combined to other datasets by using the CUSIP-number of an issue.
Issuer data Name, Industry, funding structure data, etc.
Slide 5
Mergent FISD Issue data For example, Name Issue type
Convertible, preferred, junior, senior, etc. Issue size Credit
rating Moodys, Standard and Poors, Fitch, and Duff and Phelps
Coupon Rate, type, etc.
Slide 6
Articles using FISD data Cici, Gibson, and Merrick (2011, JFE)
Credit rating, coupon rate, maturity date, and issue size Merging
FISD data with Morningstars holdings data using bond CUSIPs. Cici
and Gibson (2012, JFQA) Credit rating, coupon rate, maturity date,
issue size, but also one source of price data FISD contains bond
trades done by insurance companies
Slide 7
Articles using FISD data Bessembinder, Kahle, Maxwell, and Xu
(2009, RFS) Use FISD coupon data to calculate accrued interest for
TRACE bonds Also issue size, credit rating, time to maturity
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How I have used FISD? Convertible bond identification Credit
rating Coupon rate Issue size Time to maturity
Slide 9
Sources: http://www.whartonwrds.com/archive-pages/our-
datasets/fisd/http://www.whartonwrds.com/archive-pages/our-
datasets/fisd/ http://www.mergent.com/ Cici G, Gibson S &
Merrick Jr. JJ (2011). Missing the marks? Dispersion in corporate
bond valuations across mutual funds. Journal of Financial Economics
101(1), 206- 226. Cici G & Gibson S (2012). The performance of
corporate- bond mutual funds: Evidence based on security-level
holdings. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 41 (1),
159-178.
Slide 10
Sources: Bessmbinder H, Kahle K, Maxwell W & Xu D (2009).
Measuring abnormal bond performance. Review of Financial Studies 22
(10), 4219-4259.
