Simple questions about the bond dates

Was doing FINCAD lately; got confused by the various dates it is using. Could somebody kindly help? What is settle date? effective date? value date? Also could somebody help to explain the process of constructing the interest rate curve? I found passing level I won’t help me much in my work. Thanks.

Maybe you should check out the help in Fincad? settle date is date you own security. value date is the date you want the value own. effective date is the beginning of the accrual period. For constructing an interest rate curve, there are surely instructions in the CFA material or it is widely available on the web.

Bootstrap: try e.g. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bootstrap+"yield+curve"&btnG=Google+Search It gets a bit tricky when the problem is overconstrained, which is the usual case if you have a bunch of market-priced bonds that you want to use as input.

Thanks guys. Joey, what’s the the value date again? I still don’t understand your explanation… Another question for you guys, what’s the par rate? Is it the same as the spot rate?

search “par curve” in google.