Updates

  1. Person pages list letters, writing, profiles and links as sortable tables with filters, and show each person's companies as links; Fund letters show each letter's description in its own column.
  2. Experts show a checked job title and a short description of each person; 30 more people have photographs.
  3. Every company, fund, university and publication the experts work for has a page listing the people there.
  4. Fund letters show each letter's thesis and filter by it; 225 person pages list the essays, columns and newsletter issues the person wrote.
  5. Person pages list every essay and newsletter issue a person wrote, and their own books as a table in List view.
  6. Recommends shows the five largest kinds of book and the rest under More; browse pictures load sooner.
  7. Podcasts and talks link the original episode, filter by Audio and video or Press, and list each publisher once.
  8. Pages are wider, Recommends has List and Grid, and a filter clicked again turns off.
  9. Book cards sit in a ruled grid with Open Library and Goodreads links and each book's one-line note.
  10. Funds is now Investors; each investor's styles are buttons that filter the table.
  11. Podcasts and talks on a person's page filter by year and publisher and show as a list or a grid of pictures.
  12. Quotes show only people's own words: 472 summaries written by list sites are gone.
  13. Country pages open from Browse again, and every link on the shelf lands on a page.
  14. Subject and person pages show their sections as tabs, and each book appears once on a person's page.
  15. Book cards show the quote, who said it and the source; grids show five cards to a row.
  16. On a phone, a menu holds the sections, search, Updates, Feedback and dark mode.
  17. Feedback takes a screenshot of the page with no browser prompt, opens a screenshot full size when you click it, and clears itself once sent.
  18. Book cards are centred, search names the topic each book sits in, and any text cut short shows whole on hover.
  19. Search groups its results by kind: people, companies, geographies, subjects, topics, books, funds, fund letters and papers.
  20. The Books table lists who recommended each book by name, and the browser tab names the section you are in.
  21. Feedback can take a screenshot of the page, or one you paste or choose, and opens in the corner beside Updates.
  22. Each rail button reopens its section where you left it, and Browse, Table and People show on every book and subject page.
  23. Filters grey out choices that hold nothing instead of hiding them, and Books › People filters by authors or recommenders.
  24. Feedback takes a subject line and up to three screenshots.
  25. Biographies are grouped by the person they are about: 41 new pages, from Abraham Lincoln to Lee Kuan Yew.
  26. Sport splits into 23 sports, and Religion into one topic per faith.
  27. Book lists show as cards: the cover, one recommendation quote and every recommender by name.
  28. Seventeen subjects that had two or three pages under different names now have one page each.
  29. Every page lists its Experts as authors and recommenders, with a link to them on the Experts tab.
  30. Economics, Financial history, Financial panics and Accounting are subjects of their own, with one page per financial crisis.
  31. Book, person and subject pages open inside the app, so the tabs stay in view.
  32. 996 more book covers, and photographs or logos for 227 more people and companies.
  33. Books › Browse shows every subject as cards, and the rail holds Fund letters, Papers, Experts, Books and Funds.
  34. Every topic over 150 books splits into narrower topics, each with a page of its own.

Send feedback

What is it?
Screenshots, up to 3 (optional)
or paste one with Ctrl+V

We use your email only to reply to you.
The Bond Book

The Bond Book

Annette Thau
1991
T3 300 pages · about 5h to read Open Librarygoodreads

Retail-investor guide with the clearest chapters on buying munis.

Summary

Annette Thau wrote the standard reference for individual investors in fixed income, covering what bonds are, how they are priced and traded, and what the different sectors involve.

The foundational chapters cover yield and its several definitions, including current yield, yield to maturity and yield to call, and why the distinctions matter; the inverse relationship between price and yield; duration as a measure of interest rate sensitivity; the yield curve and what its shape indicates; and credit ratings and what they measure. Thau is careful about the specific ways individual investors are disadvantaged in bond markets, particularly the opacity of dealer markdowns on retail transactions.

The sector chapters cover Treasury securities including inflation-protected issues, agency and mortgage-backed securities with their prepayment behaviour, municipal bonds and their tax treatment and credit analysis, corporate bonds, and international issues. She then covers bond mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, comparing them with direct ownership, and portfolio construction including laddering and the matching of maturities to needs. The book is aimed at individual investors and is unusually honest about the transaction costs they face. Editions matter for the market structure and yield environment described.

Key takeaways 7

  1. Yield to maturity, current yield and yield to call answer different questions, and confusing them produces wrong purchase decisions.
  2. Individual investors pay dealer markdowns on bond transactions that are not disclosed as commissions and can be substantial.
  3. Duration measures a bond's price sensitivity to rate changes and is the number an investor should manage rather than maturity.
  4. Callable bonds transfer the benefit of falling rates to the issuer, which caps the holder's upside while leaving the downside.
  5. Mortgage-backed securities shorten when rates rise and lengthen when they fall, which is the opposite of what a holder wants.
  6. Bond funds have no maturity date, so they never return principal at par the way an individual bond does.
  7. Thau argues that individual investors should ladder maturities to match anticipated needs rather than attempting to forecast rates.

Who should read it

Individual investors buying bonds directly or through funds who need the mechanics and the specific costs they face.

Similar books 6

Chosen by shared topics, the entries that hold them, and the people who recommended both.

Bond Markets, Analysis, and StrategiesBond Markets, Analysis, and Strategies
T2 Bond Markets, Analysis, and Strategies
Frank J. Fabozzi · 1989
Open LibraryGoodreads

The standard text on bonds: instruments, valuation, risk and portfolio strategy.

The Handbook of Fixed Income SecuritiesThe Handbook of Fixed Income Securities
T2 The Handbook of Fixed Income Securities
Frank J. Fabozzi · 1983
Open LibraryGoodreads

The standard reference on every kind of bond, its analysis and its management.

The Handbook of Municipal BondsThe Handbook of Municipal Bonds
T2 The Handbook of Municipal Bonds
Sylvan G. Feldstein, Frank J. Fabozzi · 2008
Open LibraryGoodreads

A reference on municipal bonds: credit analysis, structures and analytics.

The Rating Agencies and Their Credit RatingsThe Rating Agencies and Their Credit Ratings: What They Are, How They Work, and Why They Are Relevant
T4 The Rating Agencies and Their Credit Ratings: What They Are, How They Work, and Why They Are Relevant
Herwig Langohr · 2008
Open LibraryGoodreads

Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai

Fixed Income AnalysisFixed Income Analysis
T2 Fixed Income Analysis
Frank J. Fabozzi, Barbara S. Petitt, Jerald E. Pinto, Wendy L. Pirie · 2007
Open LibraryGoodreads

The CFA Institute's fixed-income text: bond valuation, risk and analysis.

Inside the Yield BookInside the Yield Book
T1 Inside the Yield Book
Sidney Homer, Martin L. Leibowitz · 1972
Open LibraryGoodreads

Bond maths made usable: price and yield, interest on interest, and bond swaps.

Where it sits in the reference 2

Municipal bonds
Assets
Bonds and fixed income
Assets

Topics

InvestingFinance and MarketsReference WorksFinance, accounting and economics references