Trade bonds directly (not using an ETF)

Ideas šŸ’”
10

Iā€™ve been working my way through the Introductory Wiki and found this excellent post.

Iā€™ve gone off to to try and get my head around bonds (gilts in particular) and found VGOV. As an academic exercise Iā€™m trying to understand it better and have some questions, if you donā€™t mind :slight_smile:

These are the ā€œcharacteristicsā€ from the webpage:

VGOV%20chars
VGOV%20chars1984Ɨ802 41.3 KB

Iā€™m confused about YTM and average coupon values. Am I right in saying that the YTM is (very approximately) the bond equivalent to an APR in a savings account? I understand from the blog that the coupon is the interest rate based on the original bond price. As I canā€™t see that, Iā€™m not sure what this figure is telling me. Is that right?

Basically, any advice on how I interpret this? How would I assess expected income returns from an ETF like this?

Also, am I right in assuming that interest (is that the right word?) would be paid on a predefined schedule, a little like dividends? How does this work? How would I find the details?

This is probably all very basic to those in the know - thanks in advance for sharing the knowledge.