New disclosure rules will be a boon to bond investors

Excerpt from The Global and Mail article:

For too long, investors who buy and sell bonds in their portfolio have been under the impression that there is no cost, fee or commission applied to these trades. The contracts you receive post-trade certainly don’t show anything. This is about to change.

As of July 15, 2014, brokerage firms are now required to disclose the commission you paid to buy or sell a bond or other fixed income security. If the average balanced investor has 50 per cent of their portfolio in bonds it’s obvious this is a huge part of the investment business. It seems strange that disclosing the fee hasn’t been required before as the lack of cost information kept investors in the dark and vulnerable to abuse.