Customer Reviews

Getting Started in Bonds

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is brimming with information on bonds. It is a straightforward guide for people just getting started in the bond market. The examples and definitions are extremely useful, and help to demystify the subject. And it is easy to read!

This is an excellent book for someone with moderate knowledge of the stock market and is interested in learning about bonds. I would not recommend this for complete beginners because there are many references to economics and finance that might be difficult for a first time investor to understand. It seems best suited for intermediate investors.

Getting Started in Bonds does a great job explaining the various types of bonds available: treasury, municipal, corporate, mortgage backed securities, etc. It will make you aware of the options you have available when searching for a good deal. It also puts you in a good mode for taking all factors into account such as the possible tax advantages of a particular bond, determining how much liquidity you want with your bonds, etc.

Overall, it's a good reference to have on hand. It also helps to read more than once, as there are many things to remember. However, I am surprised at the amount of useful information crammed into this small easy-to-read book. Investors, as well as business students, will find this book Getting Started in Bonds an excellent investment.

I quite liked the style - it is an easy book to read. It has quite a few useful tips of the trade. It is obviously an introductory level text and skates over most of the technicalities, but it's very good on the stuff that it does cover. There are one or two typographical errors (mislabelled diagrams etc.) that may cause a bit of confusion. Overall though, I thought that it was very good.

Most books on bonds put me to sleep -- not this one. I have 4-5 books on bond finance and of all the introductory books this is my favorite. It covers all the major topics without overburdening the reader. My one complaint is about the physical construction of the book. It's not available in HB and the cover is quite flimsy and curls easily. In fact this seems to be characteristic of the "Getting Started" series. The publisher needs to improve the durability of the binding.

I have a great deal of experience in financial markets now. After the mandatory stints with stocks, futures and options, I became interested in bonds. They are a great investment for the middle-class joe with security and low-maintenance appeal. I have read many of the basic and intermediate bond books out there. This little guide is probably one of the best in this class out there! Many of the points made by other bond books: re-investment risk, buy-ask spreads and liquidity issues, the yield curve, the bipolar dynamic etc are made in this book more clearly and more memorably. If I had read about buy-ask spreads, premium bonds and liquidity in this book before I started trading bonds, I probably would have saved myself about 5-10 thousand dollars. Her husband peppers the book with little cartoons, and she peppers the book with a fun, light-hearted attitude. The author seems very knowledgable but very human and approachable (like when she explains trying to fudge her understanding of the yield-price relationship on a new job. :) There is nothing remarkable here, just brief, basic, clear and expeditious. But in a world of get-rich-quick schemes and Nostradamus-like financial prophesies, this book stands as a refreshing guide to bond basics.

The book is very thorough and easy to understand. I gave it to someone interested in learning about the subject and he found it the perfect introduction to the subject.

The book is an easy read and full of useful information.
A great place to begin to understand bonds.
The book is wrriten by someone with "Big Bank" experience selling bonds, not just someone with a CFP (like the Bonds for Dummies book).

By the way the author of the Bonds for Dummies books states the CFP and the CFA designations as similar...wrong. The CFP does not cover investing anywhere near the level of a CFA...when an author makes such uninformed statement I have no confidence in his book.

Anyway, this is not a book about duration, convextiy or OAS, but you will learn enough to make basic Bond investing decesions.

This book contains some good information, but could have been better organized. Technical terms, for instance, are used before they are defined. While not terrible, it's certainly not great either.

I picked up this book at the library hoping to learn a little more about bonds. Unfortunately, this book is poorly organized and doesn't spend enough time introducing the basics of bonds. It has some helpful pictures, but I couldn't make it past the first 50 pages before I gave up. I borrowed "All About Bonds, Bond Mutual Funds, and Bond ETFs, 3rd Edition" and this is much clearer to me.