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When Miral Kim-E first attempted to get his card printed, he violated an unwritten rule. "The printer actually wouldn't initially print my business card," Kim-E (pronounced Kimmy) said. "He said 'You have to have your address on the business card I said, 'I do not."
Kim-E won that battle. Besides his name, title and "MEK Securities L.L.C.," the card has only a Web site address, e-mail, telephone and fax number.
The card is a physical manifestation of the fact that MEK Securities exists only as electronic impulses stored in a computer. There is no office and, right now, here are no customers. While it is anticipated there will be some of the latter, the former, Kim-E says, will never be necessary.
Still, virtual companies are a dime a dozen nowadays. What makes Kim-E's stand out is that he claims he will provide "Joe Six Pack" access to a market that has been previously unavailable to him--the bond market.
While it is possible to buy a "bond," Kim-E said, only the larger investors qualify for favorable rates.
Kim-E has created a system where the little guys can bond together electronically to buy bonds and so compete with the big guys.
A bond is a certificate embodying a business's or a government's promise to pay back money at a certain interest rate over a certain period of time.
What is bought and sold on the bond market, Kim-E explained, is the base amount upon which interest is calculated. The usual amount is $1,000 for a corporate bond and $5,000 for a government or municipal bond.
The problem is that, unlike the stock market, there is no bond exchange. Instead brokers make trades amongst themselves via telephone.
The purchase or sale of a bond is not a simple matter of transmitting an order to a trading floor. A seller of a particular bond has to be found and then the trade has to be negotiated.
The amount of work involved makes it more profitable for brokers to focus on fewer but larger transactions rather than a high volume of smaller trades. For a smaller regional bond dealer, the average transaction size is $100,000.
A dealer is the party that first puts a bond out for sale.
Smaller...