The very question shows the problem.

Nobody would ask that with stocks.

It is clear that anyone can just as easily put the papers of Daimler, Bayer and VW in their custody account as the manager of a large equity fund or a pension fund can.

Even around 10,000 foreign stocks are easily tradable on German stock exchanges.

Daniel Mohr

Editor in the economy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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The situation is different in the bond market, unfortunately from the perspective of private investors. If you want to take advantage of the full spectrum of the market, you have to put yourself in the hands of bond funds and ETFs, especially when it comes to corporate bonds. Why is that? The financial supervisory authority BaFin has just made this anchored in the EU regulation in a study: Since 2018, private investors have had to be provided with a basic information sheet before they can buy a bond. As a rule, however, these are not created for corporate bonds. Result: Private investors are not allowed to buy them. The trading volumes of private investors in bonds have since halved accordingly. The Ministry of Finance and BaFin have already pointed out the problem. However, the EU Commission has not (yet) responded.

The Stuttgart Stock Exchange, which plays a leading role in the trading of bonds for private investors, reports that of 10,000 bonds on its platform, only 2000 can be invested by private investors because of the regulation.

She is currently working on making the tradability for private investors directly visible for each individual bond.

In addition, more and more of the theoretically investable bonds are only issued in high denominations.

This means that an investor often has to invest at least 100,000 euros in a single bond, less is not possible.

This is only an option for very few private investor accounts.

There are regulatory reasons for this, too, because less comprehensive rules apply to these bonds.

After all: some bonds can also be found in small denominations for private investors.

The rest only works through funds.

Do you have any questions about money? Please contact Daniel Mohr at fragdenmohr@faz.de