THREE new tracker bonds have just been launched, one from a company just entering this busy investment market, the other two from Irish Permanent and the Irish Nationwide Building Society, neither of whom have been particularly active in this product area.

IPT Financial Services, better known for its administration of pension funds, has brought out its first tracker, called the Guaranteed Equity Plus, which is offering a potential return of 70 per cent gross (11.20 CAR) for a five year investment period.

Like all trackers, this one guarantees your capital (a minimum £5,000 is required) plus the 70 per cent gross return if British and US stockmarkets which are being tracked, rise in value by at least 15 per cent over the next five years, something IPT is confident it will do, given the markets' track record over the past five years. The deposit taker in this case is ICC Bank. The closing date is June 9th.

The Irish Permanent bond - its fourth Balanced Guaranteed Equity Bond - is more complicated and gives two term and investment options. First you must choose for how long you wish to invest, either three years and six months or five years and six months, then you must choose a 50/50 split of your money between a deposit account and the stock markets or a 25/75 between the deposit account and' stock markets.

The longer the saving option the better the guaranteed deposit return the five year option results in a 40 per cent gross return; the three year option is a 20 per cent gross return on that portion of your funds.

The indices involved in this bond, which closes on May 23rd are the Nikkei 300 and the Eurotrack 200. Minimum investment is £3,000.

The Irish Nationwide bond, called the Century Bond 2000, lasts, as its name implies, until the year 2000 (May 31st, 2000 to be exact) and it includes a minimum 7 per cent gross return and no limit on any growth achieved by eight leading world stock market indices mainly representing the US, Japan and Britain while the balance is from other European stock market indices.

The minimum investment required is £3,000 with the closing date of May 28th. A slightly more unusual feature of this bond is that it averages out the closing level of the index not over the last six month period (some bonds average over the last 12 months), but at the end of every six month period, the idea being that you protect early gains or currency fluctuations at the end of the investment period.