The Strategic Bond Investor: Strategies and Tools to Unlock the Power of the Bond Market
$19.25
| Author(s) | |
|---|---|
| Format |
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| Pages |
643 |
| Published Date |
2021 |
744
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Description
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.
Contents:
- The Importance of the Bond Market
- Why Low Interest Rates Will Likely Persist into the 2030s
- Negative Interest Rates: Can It Happen in the United States?
- The Composition and Characteristics of the Bond Market
- Bond Basics
- Risks Facing Today’s Bond Investors
- Don’t Fight the Fed
- The Yield Curve
- Real Yields
- The Five Tenets of Successful Interest Rate Forecasting
- From Tulips to Treasuries
- Credit Ratings
- Bond Strategies from a Bond Manager
- The Keynesian Endpoint
- Using Economic Data to Inform Your Investment Decisions
- ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Investing
- How Interest Rates Have Shaped the Political Landscape
The Strategic Bond Investor: Strategies and Tools to Unlock the Power of the Bond Market By Anthony Crescenzi pdf
23 reviews for The Strategic Bond Investor: Strategies and Tools to Unlock the Power of the Bond Market
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Karter Tucker (verified owner) –
This book is very well structured, easy to read, and very informative. A must read for any type of investor and covers the broad bond market exceptionally well.
Kyrie Griffin (verified owner) –
This book is the type of book that reminds you that stocks are not the only investment around. In plain language he discusses yield curves and backs up his information with solid charts and graphs.
Mr.Cescenzi opens your eyes to the psycology of those that sell bonds and the importance of bonds in your own personal portfolio.
Since I am an author of Futures/Commodities books and an investor in Bond Futures, I read this book to enhance my knowledge of bonds and to take advantage of the bond trading pits in Chicago.
I believe that’s the only failure of the book. He discusses that there are no centralized exchanges for bonds and grossly neglects that many bonds have a futures component and are traded for only a fraction of their face value.
All in all this is a great resource book and should be seriously considered for those investors that are tired of being abused by the stock market.
Ivan Magana (verified owner) –
As the title says strategies and tools to unlock the power of the bond market. It delivers in that it covers the strategies and tools needed to make intelligent decisions on bonds. Before you look into this book I must warn you that this is not a quantitative book. This book covers such things as qoute depth, yeild curves, credit ratings and so on. The content of this book goes deeply into the determination of interest rates. From watching the Fed to reading what the market might be heading. There is a chapter dedicated to watching the Fed. One of the points that stuck me in this book is how not to follow dumb money (e.i. speculators, Anthony Crescenzi’s advice is to follow the smart money.
This book is for is not for advanced for people. I’am aware that there are other books comparable to this one but this is the only book I have read and not planning to read another book comparable to this one. There are a lot of resources of in this book that make “The Strategic Bond Investor : Strategies and Tools to Unlock the Power of the Bond Market” worthwhile to read. I have to agree with one of the reviewers about his writing style, it is in fact engaging.
Cyrus Watkins (verified owner) –
The Strategic Bond Investor is much more thorough and relevant than most bond books. Others who commented discussed the lack of certain strategies, but those reviews miss the point. The book offers strategies and insights that are the most important ones to grasp: those which help investors to forecast what to expect next in the bond market. Sure, laddering, and other traditional strategies are important, but they do not represent the path to big money, understanding trends in the markets is far more important and this book is a major help in that regard. Other books are very weak in talking about the things that move markets. For example, there is an excellent section on the inverted yield curve, and insights into tools for tracking market sentiment and how to use futures to gather market intelligence. Mr. Crescenzi works on Wall Street, so his insights are better than anyone on the outside could deliver.
There is also an appendix in the back of the book that gives great insights into the major monthly economic news that is released each month.
The Strategic Bond Investor is far above other bond books and is easy to understand.
Morgan Sweeney (verified owner) –
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.
Seth Moses (verified owner) –
Most of the fixed income books just cover the mathematical part of the securities, which is important but not sufficient enough for the trading floor terminologies.
“The Strategic Bond Investor” because of its nice top-down approach helps in understanding the whole economic process. The coverage of the Federal Reserve system and how it manages interest rates is great. Also, the yield curve analysis and spread analysis and their historical/ political significance is awesome.
I really found the detailed overview of the various important economic indicators very helpful.
Again, the book has been written in a way that helps one to become part of the day-to-day happenings in the economy and to understand micro picture from macro level.
The Strategic Bond Investor does a great job by educating people both on the Wall Street and on main street.
Charlie Mercado (verified owner) –
This is an amazing book. Even though the book is for bonds, reading it will educate you to be a better overall investor.
Everlee Doyle (verified owner) –
Best book out there about the bond Market , must read in the current context . The author clearly explains with common sense backed by historic data how bonds works treasuries, corporate, etc, etc… which factors are important, how interest rates work, the yield curve, how to anticipate fed movements, how to read market sentiment in search for clues to position about the market next move, etc . This is a top book, a wealth of knowledge and experience for the bond market, the best book I red about Bonds… and crucial for whats happening in the market right now.
Camilla Lyons (verified owner) –
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!”
Amara Meyers (verified owner) –
My purpose in reading this book was to gain a better understanding of the bond market. Over the years I have been moving my retirement account between stocks and bonds based on whether I felt the stock market was ready for a major correction as I did in 2007. Although that was a good decision , I did it without a deep understanding of the different kinds of bonds and their behavior, and I can comfortably say that I just lucked out picking a good bond fund.
This book went a long way to further my knowledge of the bond market by explaining at a basic level how understanding general economic and market trends can be used to profit in the bond market. It also discusses the different kinds of bonds and which ones to invest in based on the economic and market environment. It also helped me transition from investing in stocks and money market funds to bond investing in an easy way without intricate mathematical details that are likely to get the reader lost as I have encountered in other books.
If you are interested in understanding how to pick the right bond fund to invest in this book will be a big help. I highly recommend it.
Tate Mayo (verified owner) –
I picked this book as a follow-up to my previous two books – Why Wall Street Matters and The Big Short – as part of my deep-dive into understanding the happenings at Wall Street, its quirks, the smarts, and their blatant “complexification” of simple concepts. This time though, I wanted to focus on the Bond Market, the biggest market there is (way bigger than the other, well-known stock market), and this book by Anthony Crescenzi really excelled at being my Bond Market 101 textbook.
The book is well structured, explains the concepts it intends to in an adequately entertaining manner, and at parts reads like a typical textbook. The most curious aspect of the book is that this was written in 2002, and because it pre-dates The Great Recession of 2008, it focuses predominantly on events like the dot-com bubble of 2000s, the Fed’s interest-rate fluctuations of 2001s etc. It also holds Alan Greenspan with very high regards (in fact, there’s an entire chapter called “Don’t Fight the Fed” dedicated to highlight the power and influence of the Fed where it justifies most actions of the same).
After completing this book, I’ve a lot deeper and better understanding of the often heard-of concepts – like the Treasury Bonds and Notes, the mortgage backed securities, corporate bonds, the municipal bonds, credit ratings and their curious history, CDOs etc – as well as some of the concepts not so popular outside of Wall Street – like Fibonacci Trading, impact of the Yield Curve ratio, the economics of short term vs long term yields etc. Parts of the book that throw light on things like the impact of interest-rate control on the US elections, the link between Boston Tea Party and the Seven Years War, gauging market sentiment in a variety of ways (that includes the quintessential reference to the Tulip mania) etc are also very illuminative.
I did diversify my financial portfolio with bonds (with a fair understanding of it :)) post reading the book, so at the least, the book had some personal practical value! At times, the books goes way too deep in concepts for a regular but curious reader to bear, but then, one can discount that given there are summary sections at the end of each chapter if you did choose to ignore any sections of the chapter.
I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in appreciating the potential of the bond market. Until I read the book, I had no idea the Treasury bond market was that huge, or that Yield Curve and recession probabilities are so closely linked!
Ace Ryan (verified owner) –
I just started reading the book and it lays the groundwork for understanding the bond markets.
Hugh Fitzgerald (verified owner) –
Book is pretty good as a beginning bond text.
Amaris Sullivan (verified owner) –
I got this after a friend, who is a day trader, recommended it to me. I got part way through it and found that the author spends too much time going into the history of investing and explaining why things are the way they are. I wanted something that explained how to invest in bonds, without understanding how that market developed over the last 100 years. I have an MBA and another business degree, but not a lot of investing knowledge, so others may like this approach. Guess I need bond investing for dummies first.
Jedidiah Fernandez (verified owner) –
Good book, but you have to read it to the end to appreciate it because it was not well organized – the chapters are not arranged sequentially and so it took my reading it all to understand the bond universe.
Nixon Jacobs (verified owner) –
No way this book gets published, except there are a zillion guys like me suffering for an understanding of this Bond Market who will buy a reputable book on the subject.
The topic area covered is EXCELLENT . The graphs and attempts to make it understandbable to a college finance grad are challenging. To an average person, no way.
This is unfortunate.
The author almost does it! This is a good book. But there is no way even an average business grad will absorb what is said. This is unfortunate. IT need not be so complex. I am reading the ebook version , so this is maybe more difficult for such a complex subject.
The author needs to bring in a group of interested readers to a viewpoint panel so as to rewrite it and deliver a final version that will enlighten millions more to this complex issue.
Marlee Moran (verified owner) –
Reading this book was so boring it was like… Well it was like reading a book on strategic bond investing. That being said it had a wealth of information. The price I got it for used was well worth the Fed speak chapter, and the detailed explanation of the various monthly economic data (employment, housing starts etc). Also each chapter has a summary that is helpful if you are just scanning the book. For non bond investors it is quite good to have for reference.
Julien Bush (verified owner) –
Great book!
Kashton Adams (verified owner) –
The Bond Bible
Sarah Rosario (verified owner) –
The Strategic Bond Investor is a very informative book for any investment, bonds or equities. It serves as a good reference for a number of investment topics, topics which are related to judging the current economic condition and climate. However, be forewarned – you might need a degree in finance or economics to get full value from this book.
I am new to bond investing so, I found many of the chapters informative but in a way that I had not anticipated. The book was a lesson on macro economics and judging the bond market not on bond investing strategies as a specific topic(s). Anyone serious about investing will find this helpful, even eye-opening, but you will not find information that will help you develop a bond portfolio. Maybe I should say that you will find information to wisely judge your bond portfolio, but you will not find information as to how to build your bond portfolio. You will learn valuable information about yield curves but you will not learn about how to build a laddered portfolio as a simple example.
The critical thing though is that if one is not well versed in finance or economics, many of the topics will be difficult to understand fully. Useful information abounds but I was left feeling as though I only absorbed 15% of the information covered, if that.
Lola Pierce (verified owner) –
The book is useful to people who have a basic understanding of the fixed income fundamentals and wish to build on that knowledge. The book is for serious students of the bond market. The book describes the nuances, risks, and return considerations of different types of bonds. The knowledge gained in this book will help the reader to assess the merits or demerits of different bond portfolio strategies that change under different economic conditions.
Stella Macdonald (verified owner) –
I am more than halfway through the book, and thought I would share my thoughts.
First, this book is outstanding in terms of the depth of knowledge imparted. If you want to understand bonds in the context of today’s market (especially with regard to the all-important Fed), this book is a MUST read. I am convinced that you will become a better investor. Imagine getting taught by one of the top bond managers at the top bond investment firm in the world! This is just that. So: If you’re investing in bonds, this book is very important.
I would just say that this book is not an “idiots” guide. I am an intermediate-level investor, with a good vocabulary and a decent understanding of the financial markets. I feel like it’s more of a book to train a professional bond portfolio manager. The math is fairly light (only one bit of calculus is introduced – convexity – and it is not vital to understand it in order to understand the book). However, some of the reading is tedious. I feel like the authors could have the benefit of a professional writer (say, a journalist) edit the book for clarity and simplicity.
That being said, if you really want an exhaustive overview of the current bond market, it’s a very good book. It also has invaluable advice on how to understand the current market. Just be prepared to re-read paragraphs as you go through to make sure you understand. Also, there are concepts introduced early in the book (like market/quote depth) which are not explained until later. So if you find yourself confused, just hold on, the author will get around to explaining a term perhaps in the next few pages, or even more fully in a later chapter.
Evan Pearson (verified owner) –
“The Stategic Bond Investor” is a great way to increase your knowledge about bonds, as well as investing in bonds. I know a great deal about stocks, as well as investing in general, but after spending a lot of time reading about bonds on the morningstar website, it became clear I did NOT know much about bond investing. Several of the knowledgeable posters kept recommending the same book, over and over, and so I finally bought it. Am now reading it for the second time, a lot of “meat” in this book. I’m not sure I digested it all on the first pass. Now that I am in my mid 50’s , I realized we needed to increase the bond allocation in our portfolio, especially since I am now semi retired and dependent on investment income. This is a great place to learn about this topic, and will (hopefully) help in making wiser investment choices.