Is the zero coupon yield curve only useful for talking about zero coupon bonds?
No. Besides zero coupon instruments, the NSE Zero Curve can be used to price a wide range of securities including coupon paying bonds, derivatives, interest rate forwards and swaps. In arriving at the NSE Zero Curve for a coupon bearing instrument (as shown above), what we have simply done is stripped the n cashflows into n zero coupon instruments, the first n-1 being coupon payments and the n th being the terminal coupon plus redemption amount.
