Throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, the research department at Salomon Brothers produced countless publications, known as "brown books," that helped shape the way the investment community thought about and analyzed bonds. To expand on Salomon Brothers’ preeminence in research and analytics, development began on an innovative fixed income analytics software platform in 1989. "The Yield Book" was chosen as the name for the platform as an homage to the price/yield tables that were common in the 1960s and to the classic investment tome "Inside the Yield Book: New Tools for Bond Market Strategy" written by Sidney Homer and Martin Leibowitz in 1972.
On July 1, 1989, the first version of The Yield Book was deployed to select Salomon Brothers’ salespeople and branch analysts internally and to three customers externally. The impact of The Yield Book was quickly apparent as it enhanced the dialogue between the firm and its customers, allowing customers to make more informed investment decisions. The original version of The Yield Book was delivered via workstations over a dedicated network and allowed users to perform single security price/yield calculations and scenario rate of return analysis.