August 18th, 2008, 4:54 pm
There are a number of different ways to do this but in essence what you need to do is to build a yield curve reflecting the yields of existing bonds in the market, and their respective maturities (make sure you only look at bonds from the same credit risk class and liquidity) and basically use this as a guide as to the necessary yield your corporate bond would need to offer according to its maturity, in order to match the existing bonds on offer in the market.As a newbie, the easiest initial step would probably be to look at the PAR yield curve which shows the plot of the yield to maturity against term to maturity for bonds priced at par (and is therefore equal to the coupon rate for the respective bonds) This is actually the method used by corporate financiers to achieve the same end as you seek to.Of course, it is highly unlikely that you will find enough bonds trading at par to make your curve complete, but as an initial step I think this is the best suggestion. (And then interpolate between data points to get an indication as to the complete curve)