Customer Reviews

Naked Guide to Bonds: What You Need to Know--Stripped Down to the Bare Essentials

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Full of useless info (the days of the week on which Treasury auctions take place, for example) larded with annoying attempts at humor. Fidelity and Pimco have the essentials about bonds on their websites, the latter for free, so why buy this?

If you're really interested in the fixed-income market, I suggest Patrick Brown's "An Introduction to the Bond Markets". Even if you ignore the math, you'll learn far more, and have a book worth more than a single read.

I read the Motley Fool Investment Guide and really liked it, so when I saw this at the bookstore with Tom Gardner's endorsement on it, I thought I'd give it a shot. Just like the Fools, this book is written for regular people and is pretty humorous (for an investment book!). The chapters are well organized so that you learn about bonds "step-by-step". It includes discussions about every type of bond and advice on how to put them into your
portfolio. It's definitely not written like a textbook -- even the complicated concepts come across clearly. In short, this is a great book. I found it easy to understand and, most importantly, full of extremely useful information.

In this very good beginner's guide to the bond market, author Michael V. Brandes addresses all of the fundamental questions clearly and concisely. Bond math can be daunting, but while the author includes a few equations for illustrative purposes, he clearly addresses his book to the general run of individual investors. The book, which has moments of surprising good humor, says right off the bat that bond investing can be dull in comparison to stock investing, not because the stakes are lower, but because the elements of personality and surprise are considerably more muted in the debt market than in the equity markets. We highly recommend this book, even though it is pedantic at times - a risk you take when you venture into the complex realm of bond investing.

As a former techie who found his way to the wonderful world of supporting a fixed income desk, I found this book to be an excellent overview of the bond market. The author explains complex concepts such as duration and yield in terms that anyone can understand. This is by far the best introductory book to the bond market I have read (and I have read many)!

I was not expecting to gain this much insight on the topic of bonds and investing but am delighted to have picked this book up and savoured it to the last page in the course of one plane ride!
Adept, succinct without compromising depth, this young new author has really delivered on his promise to give us the "bare essentials" that anyone should know!

This is definitely a serious investment book, but written with a sense of humor. I was surprised how comprehensive it is, especially since it is only 240 pages. It's certainly smaller than most other investment books around. But I guess that's the point of making it "stripped down." As advertised, it eliminates all the financial jargon that you see in textbooks and is written
so that you don't feel lost halfway through any of the chapters. I also like that the author takes a practical approach, explaining exactly how to invest after you've learned the basics. I highly recommend Naked Guide to Bonds for anyone interested in learning about bonds and how the bond market works.

New to The Bond Market? This Book's for You!
When I was given this book as a gift, I never expected to read it since I thought it would be too difficult to understand. But, it turns out that everything is explained in a straightforward way. It's got lots of illustrations that aren't too complicated and the chapters are short, so they're easy to get through. I really liked the summary points at the beginning of each chapter and the way the author explained each type of bond and what makes them unique. This is a terric book for any amateur investor who wants to learn about bonds without having to take a course on it. I just wish there was a Naked Guide to Stocks!

I highly recommend this book. It gives thorough and strait-forward information on every aspect of fixed-income investment vehicles. This is a great way to learn about this market if one is new to it.

as everyone learned when the stock market bubble burst 2 years ago, diversification in your investment portfolio is an absolute necessity. yet what do you do if you know nothing about the bond market, my advice is read this book. Michael Brandes explains how the bond market works in laymans terms and does not overwhelm you with technical financial jargon. A great book for anyone interested in the bond side of investing.

I have only read chapter 19, on muni bonds, which was of most interest to me. However, on page 119, isn't that an error where when calculating the TEY for the Treasury bond they divide by 1-(federal + state/local) tax rate? Shouldn't that just be 1-(state/local) tax rate since Treasuries are not exempt from federal tax? It looks like they made a cut and past error, pasting in the denominator from the muni TEY calculation of the same page. The difference is 7.9% vs what I think is the correct 5.2%; a big difference.