It's not easy to keep your eye on the bond market

— -- Q: Are there ways to follow how the bond market is doing, so I can see how severe the credit crisis is?

A: If someone asks you how stocks are doing, there's no shortage of data.

Websites like USATODAY.com let you see how all the major market indexes are doing and check up on the performance of individual stocks.

It's an entirely different story when it comes to the bond market. The bond market is much less transparent, as you can read here. Much of the trading in bonds is still done over the telephone and in privately negotiated transactions.

There is no central exchange. With stocks, buyers and sellers congregate on exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. But with bonds, buyers and sellers find each other, negotiate prices and then report the trade to regulators.

You can also track how government debt securities are doing, and other key interest rates, at this page.

If you're interested in seeing actual trades in corporate bonds, there is a system provided by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority known as TRACE. Trace lets you see what corporate bonds are selling and at what prices. You can access the system here.

And if it's municipal bonds that you're interested in, the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board provides access to EMMA, or the Electronic Municipal Market Access system. EMMA provides free data on the muni bonds that are trading and at what prices. You can access the system here.

Matt Krantz is a financial markets reporter at USA TODAY and author of Investing Online for Dummies. He answers a different reader question every weekday in his Ask Matt column at money.usatoday.com. To submit a question, e-mail Matt at mkrantz@usatoday.com. Click here to see previous Ask Matt columns.