Bonds are debt securities that the issuer (or the debtor issuing the bonds) must repay with interest, usually called coupons. Therefore they are fixed bonds, with variable interest rates, as the rate changes from one bond to another, but they are mostly fixed until the bond matures. Bond yield generally is the amount investors would earn when the bond yields at maturity. This is calculated slightly differently than the common dividend yield, because it calculates the percentage (yield) of the bond and not the dividend yield. Bond yields are important to the investor, due to the interest rates paid. Variable interest rates vary with variable bonds. This means that the investor must calculate the yield to maturity of each bond to understand whether the interest rate is a good deal. They are important because without returns (of the interest rate paid) no investor would buy a company's debt. How is a common stock investor and a bond investor different. And what different expectations they have