If you are into buying or selling municipal bonds, then you have probably noticed that a lot of companies will make offers to buy them for a very small dollar, but will then turn around and sell them at premium rates. Some of these companies insist that they are “taking your bonds to the street” on your behalf, but as we all know, this is almost never the case. There are a lot of bond traders out there who have just simply come to believe that everyone in the financial sector, be it the large bond traders or even the small time guys, are just out to make a top dollar, caring nothing for the individual trying to get the most for his bonds.

Whether this is true or not is, of course, tough to determine sometimes, but there are a lot of bond traders who say that if you take your bonds to a smaller firm, you will get a much better deal than you will with the larger ones. For example, when selling to the large firms, it can seem like taking your bonds to an auction where there is only one bidder. They will low-ball you a figure, and if they seem to like it, they will just stick with it. Now, the obvious answer would be to go elsewhere, but when everyone is doing it, what can you really do to change it?

One thing is for sure – when you start buying and selling bonds in today’s market, you will receive a very un-beautiful education on just how corrupt and rotten the system is. Does anyone really just partner up with the customer to help him make an honest profit? I am afraid that most of the time, the answer to this is no.