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The Strategic Bond Investor : Strategies and Tools to Unlock the Power of the Bond Market
 
 

The Strategic Bond Investor : Strategies and Tools to Unlock the Power of the Bond Market [Kindle Edition]

Anthony Crescenzi , Mohamed El-Erian

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Product Description

Product Description

  Uncover the newest profit opportunities in today's bond marketplace!  The Strategic Bond Investor explains how to maximize your investing returns with bonds-one of the few reliable and stable investments left standing after all the economic chaos. Senior vice president and portfolio manager at PIMCO, Anthony Cescenzi provides an aggressive yet risk-conscious approach you can easily build into your overall trading strategy in the fixed-income market. Completely updated to address the realities of an unpredictable economy,  The Strategic Bond Investor includes new sections on the parallels between the credit and bond markets, the power of the New Fed, and ways to navigate the massive price fluctuations of the post-credit-crisis markets. In addition, you-ll find:  Detailed description of different bond types Concrete data on how each one performs in various environments Key economic reports on how market factors like the credit crisis affect bond movements Techniques for forecasting the Fed-s next move-so you can stay a step ahead of changing interest rates Ways of using the yield curve and other indicators to predict the direction of the markets and the economy  The Strategic Bond Investor is a fully rounded education on bond investing, providing you with the know-how for safe, dependable investing now-and well into the future.  Table of Contents  Chapter 1. The Importance of the Bond Market  Chapter 2. Segments of the Bond Market   Chapter 3.  Types of Bonds  Chapter 4.  CDOs, CLOs, MBS, CDX, and Other New Nomenclature  Chapter 5. The Money Market: Epicenter of the Bond and Credit Markets   Chapter 6. Bond Market Basics   Chapter 7. Risks in Bonds and Credit Markets to Investors   Chapter 8. The New Fed and Its Immense Power   Chapter 9. The Yield Curve: The Bond Market's Crystal Ball   Chapter 10. The Seven Tenets of Successful Investing in the Bond Market   Chapter 11. Bond Strategies, from Ladders to Barbells   Chapter 12. From Tulips to Treasuries: Tracking Market Sentiment  Chapter 13. Using the Futures Market to Gather Market Intelligence   Chapter 14. Credit Ratings: Tool or Trouble   Chapter 15. Colossal Credit Crisis   Chapter 16. How to Track the Bond and Credit Markets   Chapter 17. Appendix on Major Economic and Top-Down Indicators  

From the Back Cover

An Innovative Approach for Earning Equity-Style Returns­­-While Offsetting Portfolio Risks­­-In Today's Bond Market

Bond investing­­historically seen as safe, stodgy, and ultra-conservative­­can be every bit as exciting and profitable as the stock market. The Strategic Bond Investor outlines a dramatic new style of bond investing, aggressive yet risk-conscious, that is long overdue for investors who have grown weary of today's "earn it today, give it back tomorrow" stock market gyrations.

The first book to approach fixed income investing from a stock market perspective, The Strategic Bond Investor provides:

  • Detailed explanations of different bond types, and how they perform in various market environments
  • Key economic reports, and how they influence bond prices and profit opportunities
  • Insights into how you can use the yield curve and other key indicators to predict the direction of the markets and the economy

The Strategic Bond Investor describes the tools every investor needs to take part in today's bond market­­spotting market extremes, analyzing volume and liquidity, and utilizing dozens of other techniques that until recently were limited to institutional and equity investors. Let its information and guidelines show you how to more effectively hedge risk in your overall portfolio, and uncover new profit opportunities in today's transformed investment marketplace.

"This book will help you to understand the most essential elements of intelligent bond investing. By simply gaining a greater understanding of the many ways the bond market can affect you and by utilizing the tools in this book to your advantage, you'll be on your way toward unlocking the power of the bond market..."­­From Chapter 1

For decades, professional investors have understood "the power of the bond market" for balancing portfolios, hedging investment risks, and even locking in fast-turnaround trading profits. The Strategic Bond Investor is the first hands-on, plain-English book to reveal the tricks of the fixed-income trade to a larger audience, and explain how all investors can start today to take profitable advantage of the biggest securities market in the world­­the U.S. bond market.

A long-overdue discussion of this accessible and flexible market, The Strategic Bond Investor provides insights and trading tips on subjects including:

  • The five largest market segments­­Treasuries, government agencies, corporate bonds, municipal bonds, and mortgage-backed securities
  • How the Fed "telegraphs" its moves, allowing investors to stay one step ahead of changing interest rates
  • All about the Yield Curve­­the bond market's reliable and all-important crystal ball

In addition to the investment dynamics of bonds, this fast-paced book discusses the importance of today's fixed income market to the economy in general. From the vital role of bonds in providing capital to growing businesses to the ways in which increased securitization and innovation assure the continued growth of the bond market, seasoned investment professional Anthony Crescenzi helps you understand every market facet­­and provides you with a bedrock foundation for making profitable decisions.

Bonds have turned the corner, and are now seen as a vital component of any well-diversified investment portfolio. Learn the rules of the game in The Strategic Bond Investor, and discover short- and long-term techniques and strategies you can use to take advantage of the unlimited potential of bond investing and make it a vital component of your overall trading strategy.


Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 3608 KB
  • Print Length: 432 pages
  • Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 2 edition (21 Jun 2010)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B0041842QU
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #288,909 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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Anthony Crescenzi
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Amazon.com:  16 reviews
44 of 45 people found the following review helpful
Highly Recommend! 20 Aug 2002
By Satya - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
Unlike books addressing stock market investing, there are relatively few investor-oriented Bond books, probably due to several reasons - (i) bond concepts are somewhat more quantitative compared to stocks, (ii) bonds have no central "bond exchanges" with readily available price quotes, (iii) bonds can't be sold and bought as easily as stocks, (iv) perception is people can't "swing for the fences" with bonds.
However, as the "Strategic Bond Investor" makes clear, it is imperative to become familiar with bond market dynamics to understand how and why interest rates are set, which in turn affects the economy and the stock market. The book does a wonderful job of laying bare the intricacies of the bond market, at the same time stays away from the more technical aspects. The writing style is very engaging, and the content is very organized. The discussion on Bond Types - how big various types of bond markets are and how they got that way, is fascinating. So are practioner-oriented "rules of thumb" permeating several chapters. Chapter on "real yields" was a bit confusing (when inflation is expected to go up or down, why do real yields move as opposed to "expected inflation"?) I initially felt the visual presentation (charts, graphs, tables etc) was somewhat limited, but as the book progressed, it seemed to be just the right amount, and contained a lot of high impact information. There is a good appendix containing a primer on economic indicators. With this, you'd be better able to judge the reaction of the market to CPI, employment, consumer sentiment, etc., etc.
The book seemed somewhat repetitive at places, but still read well. With this book, one should be able to answer: (1) How can bonds be expected to perform given the current economic information, market sentiment, etc. (2) what types of bonds can be expected to do better? I highly recommend the book for purchase. Another great book for the bond investor would be William Gross's "Everything You've Heard About Investing is Wrong!"
39 of 40 people found the following review helpful
complements Thau 18 Feb 2005
By Jeff Lipkes - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
By far the best introduction to bonds is Annette Thau's The Bond Book. But Thau makes no attempt to explain why the price of a given bond fluctuates over time. Crescenzi, one of the most frequently cited of the legion of professional Fed watchers, tries to make up this deficiency, describing the impact of Fed moves, market perceptions of the state of the economy, the supply of new issues, etc. on bond prices.

But Crescenzi has a much more ambitious agenda. He explains how the yield curve can be used to forecast developments in the economy. Other chapters summarize how to predict trends within the bond market, from analyzing the put/call ratio to interpreting the economic data that a dozen or more agencies spew out every week. He makes the case that knowing the bond market will be useful to anyone with a credit card in his or her wallet.

Crescenzi also wants the book to serve as a general introduction to bonds. There are chapters on "bond basics," types of bonds, risks facing the investor, and then inexplicably late in the book, chapters on credit ratings and using the internet. The latter is particularly weak chapter (Thau's isn't much better.) For whatever reasons, Crescenzi doesn't explain clearly how to use the internet to research individual bonds and check recent trades, and doesn't give the URLs of the sites that let you do this and purchase bonds.

If it sounds like the book is a bit of a hodge-podge, that's because it is. The book's organization leaves a lot to be desired, apart from the scope being too broad. Not only is the sequence of chapters mysterious, but there's a fair amount of repetition. While the writing itself is pretty lively, or at least conversational, I'm not sure Crescenzi has figured out his intended audience. Even though this is an introduction, some readers are bound to feel he's assuming too little and being condescending at times.

The best chapters are probably 7,8, and 9 on the yield curve, real yields, and rate forecasting. Crescenzi apparently wasn't trained as an economist or historian, and when he tries to describe the effect of interest rates on politics, he goes awry. A big fan of Clinton, he imagines Hoover believed in and practiced "laissez faire" and that budget deficits inevitably result in high interest rates. A chart of deficits as a percent of GDP vs. the yield on the 10 year note would reveal the wrongheadness of this claim. In general, there are far too few charts and graphs thoughout the book. Many more important points ought to be represented graphically--like changes in yield spreads in Ch. 12.

Still another gripe--munis get slighted throughout the book.

Despite these negatives, The Strategic Bond Investor fills an important niche and is definitely worth reading. Crescenzi is an ethusiastic teacher and he makes a fairly complex subject accessible. Though there are certainly books introducing readers to the economic indicators and explaining the Federal Reserve System, I don't know of another book that tries to make the bond market as a whole intelligible to outsiders. Hope he gets a chance to revise this in a second edition.
32 of 43 people found the following review helpful
The Stategic Bond Investor - Disappointing 7 Mar 2005
By L. Bratkovich - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
Although this book contains good information on types of bonds, yield curves and things that affect the bond market and interest rates, I found it disappointing. To me, it was overly wordy and sometimes repetitive. At times, I felt that I was slogging through molasses. My biggest disappointment was that it did not get into the specific bond investing actions that an individual like myself would take using the information presented. There was nothing about things that I was interested in i.e., bond laddering, bond mutual funds, convertible bonds, when to buy or sell short, intermediate and long term bonds, etc.

Popular Highlights

 (What's this?)
&quote;
They forget that the single most important element of successful bond investing is making an accurate assessment of the major fundamental factors that affect the direction of interest rates, the shape of the yield curve, and the level of real interest rates. &quote;
Highlighted by 22 Kindle users
&quote;
A bonds stated yield-to-maturity will be achieved only if the bonds coupon payments are reinvested at a rate equal to its yield-to-maturity and if the bond is held until its maturity date. &quote;
Highlighted by 21 Kindle users
&quote;
Given that money borrowed in the bond market eventually finds its way into the economy, one might say that changes in the level of bond issuance are good leading indicators for the economy, meaning that those changes tend to foreshadow future economic activity. This is an indicator I recommend you follow closely. &quote;
Highlighted by 21 Kindle users

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