Subscription
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Brokerage Anatomy™
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To subscribe is buy a financial instrument in the primary market, freshly issued, direct from the dealer, rather than by looking in the classifieds and buying second hand. It is very rare to buy shares by subscription (only on an initial public offering). More common for debt securities which tend not to be so liquid and not to trade so often in the secondary market, and par for the course for open-ended investment funds (like AIFs and UCITS funds)
Why aren’t debt securities traded on exchange?
Unlike shares which can trade on exchange, in organised trading facilities or over-the-counter, debt securities (bonds, notes, MTNs, certificates of deposit and so on) tend to trade only over-the-counter. They are not traded on exchange, and (while in bearer form) tend not to be traded in the secondary market nearly as often.
A given issuer tends to issue only one type of share (okay, maybe two - ordinary shares and preference shares). All of its ordinary shares are the same and are interchangeable (technically, they’re “fungible” with each other), meaning the same security is common across all venues in the market. That’s what gets listed, and it is (relatively) liquid.
By contrast, debt securitiess come in all kinds of shares and sizes. The same issuer might issue hundreds of different series with different economic characteristics, maturities and yields and features. Bonds of one series are not fungible with bonds of other series. Hence a given bond is generally far less liquid than an ordinary share of the same issuer. This, there are more issuers, and issues of bonds with different characteristics, which makes it difficult for bonds to be traded on exchanges. Another reason why bonds are traded over the counter is the difficulty in listing current prices.