Bond Reviews

You can't really use it. Huge amount of typos, omissions and errors. Just try to compute rate of return using formula from the book ROR = [(Selling price-1)/Buying price]*100. Buying for 90 and selling for 100 gives you a zero return rate, nice, isn't it. Worst book I've ever had.

As a computer systems administrator, I usually support several applications without getting too involved in their inner workings nor with the business that they run. This book, however, allowed me to understand the bond markets and to be able to interact with computer users with definite knowledge and sure understanding of the business. The book is a cross between a text book and a do-it-yourself with examples. I couldn't have done it with out it. Next I'm ordering An introduction to Derivatives.

I have read most of Gillian White's books (some were only obtainable second-hand) and loved them. However, I found this book dull, predictable and very repetitative in parts.Even the so-called "surprise ending" was not much of a surprise. A great shame as I was really excited when this book was reprinted and bought it immediately. I can thoroughly recommend some of her other titles, "Grandfather's footsteps", "Mothertime", "Beggar Bride."

This was my first experience of Gillian White. And I must say; I will definetly be reading her other works. Infact, this book got me rather excited, and I look forward to purchasing further books by White.

The story is good. Rose and her husband Michael; the perfect couple. Jessie and Daisy; the couple's rather bizzare and strange daughters. Dinah; Rose's interfering and blunt mother. Jasmine; Jessie's rather 'manly' and religious friend. And Belinda; the twisted focus of the novel.

I don't want to give too much of the plot away, but I found it to be written with suspense, and rather dark humour. I laughed aloud during much of this book, much to the dismay of fellow passengers on the London Underground. Rose is an excellent character; almost demented by her insecurities. The commentary she makes on life is hilarious. Then the plot gets nasty.

Gripping, well-told, and funny, this book is a must have for those who like their thrillers tinged with a slick of black comedy. Go on, you know you want to buy it.

I should also add that I usually read a book in a month or two. This book I read over a weekend.

This is a dumbed-down picture book version of Paddington that sacrifices most of the charm of the original stories. This is one of the few childrens' book purchases I've ever regretted. Buy A Bear Called Paddington instead.

As a child I fell in love with Paddington bear, who spoke to me more than Winnie ever could, although many have drawn simmilarities between the two. Both are fumbling, innocent little things, orphaned and adopted by human families. Winnie couldn't keep his sticky little paws out of the honey jar, and Paddingtons fondness for marmalade could be called obsessive... However for all these simmilarites the one difference is that while child-like pooh looked to Mr Robin for guidance, it was the wee bear in galoshas and a rain hat, found at the Paddington railway station, whose simplistic outlook on life saved his adoptive family from complete destruction of sanity in the day-to-day madness of the world. Paddington was a saviour in childhood, and is bound to be an absolute delight for any child who learns of his misadventures, his love of marmalade and his earnest love of his newly adopted family and newly adopted life in city.

The back cover of this book-like-object tells us that this is a book that will inform us on "How we did it." Unfortunately, the book itself fails to deliver that information. After reading it twice, I still don't know what they did, how they did it, or if they did anything at all. Did the author make real money? How much and when? Errors abound in this little tome. Some are trivial like the one about Alaric being a Goth (he was a Visigoth), the Swiss Franc is 140.6 to the dollar (impossible!), CoIogne Re is a reinsurer (it's Cologne Re) etc. Other errors are more serious especially the emphasis on value investing. Logic proves that value investing suffers from two errors: begging the question and vague definition. Which is more valuable? Philip Morris which is going nowhere or Microsoft? The text of this book runs only 69 pages and after that there is filler with previously published letters from Warren Buffet and others attached as Appendices 1,2 & 3. Appendix 3 looks like an ad for Tweedy, Browne and its form of so called value investing. There are several pages of explanation of why Tweedy underperformed the market and the main reason seems to be that they bought and held the wrong stocks at the wrong time. They don't like technology because they don't understand it and, boy have they suffered for that ignorance. Too bad their holdings are in Swiss Francs and must have lost over 40% of their value because of the strength of the dollar. I could go on about the stale jokes, the misprints, the irritating repetitions, the lack of an index, but why bother? Some books were meant to be chewed and digested, some were meant to be tossed.

This is a well-written account of Herbert Hart's extensive experience in the world of investing and how it has worked for him. This is not a long book, one can finish it in one session. It is very readable, and very funny. Mr. Hart's sense of humor shines through almost every other sentence. He captures the attention of even the most easily bored reader.

The book is also an excellent guideline for how to invest your money, even when you need to start small, as most of us do. I am sending it to my 23-year old son, and I hope he will follow Mr. Hart's wise counsel from the beginning, - including his tips on how to be frugal. As for me, I am going to revise my portfolio to follow Mr. Hart's system more closely. It has worked for him!

It's basically a collection of dumbed-down review articles on modern fixed income. There's not as much in here on option pricing as I would have wished, and if you consider yourself a reasonable technical person who's seen any fixed income trading before, it's not going to be that helpful to you.

It's a nice SUMMARY of the literature available for those who don't have the time to read it all first-hand. Since my primary interest is more towards equity exotics, the book was more than satisfactory for me. I'd say the target audience is non-fixed income exotics traders, quants without much background in fixed income, and academics.

The best article in the book is probably the one written by Das. He's one of my favorite authors and his chapter in this book is no exception.

My main complaint is that many portions of the book INSIST on using econometric models and pricing kernels rather than the DiffEq framework. For that reason, I like Paul Wilmott's presentaion of the math a little better. I find myself constantly referring back to "Derivatives" and translating what the guys in this book are trying to say.

As with most books in the field, it is also very poor at describing the implementation of the models presented.

Jan Seale, Bonds (RiverSedge, 1978)

Bonds is one of those books I'm never quite sure how to approach. It's certainly got its good points, and just as certainly its bad ones. And yet, there is no feeling of inconsistency in the poems themselves; it's obvious both the good and the bad stem from the same source. Sometimes it just makes you want to shake a writer and say "you're almost there. Just fix these things..."

Seale, who's since been published in most of America's best literary magazines and been an NEA fellowship recipient, seems to have managed to fix them. But in Bonds, which is (as far as I can tell) her first book, they are still evident. And one can find the good and the bad in the same poem all too often, for example:

"Yes, Virginia, obscurity recorded:
the lives of women metered out
in a dailiness monumentally unspoken..."
("Song for Obscure Women")

...which practically falls all over itself to tell instead of show, juxtaposed with:

"She asks for a drink.
Her hair crescendos on the pillow.
I fill the syringe and
her tiny embouchure closes on the plastic tip
(no silver tone hole today)."

There is much here to like, but prepare to wade through. ***

This book gives a very good review for beginners investing in the US bond market only. If you are a professional it is more a dictionnary, it doesn't analyse properly instruments. I would like to finally see an author able to understand that a bond is a bond, and a book like that should focus on this and not to give us a extensive listing of all US bonds in the market ....Second USA are not anymore the only financial market in the world : so "International" chapter should be at least as important as the rest of the exercise...

I did get some information from this book, but basicly it was
way over my head.

Chicago Chronicles vol. 3 is a decent source for a campaing in chicago, and the added section on milwaukee adds an extra setting. But this volume has rather useless information and things are repeated. the book is tedious and not at all as usefull as the other 2 for shicago by night, but the milwaukee section makes it at least worthwhile. I recommend gamemasters using chicago buy the first 2 books, Chicago Chronicles vol. 1 and 2, but the third is only necessary if you want an added area like milwaukee.