Bond-valuation

This book provide a visual approach to me to understand more what is the text talking about. It is very clear to me to learn and see the result of a portfolio. Very useful.

In my opinion, Junk isn't as good as other books. It is a book, written for young people and about the life of young people. But you always know, what will happen next. We read this book in school, and it was very interesting, but the suspense is only in the first ten chapters. If you have nothing to do, you can read it, but there are more better books to read.

Jan-Oliver Ohloff

I can't say enough about this book. The book is suprisingly easy to read, and uncovers insights from some of the most prominent names in HY research. A must for HY analysts, MBAs, and CFOs.

I have had the privilege of reading the galley proofs of this book and find it to be THE definitive word on High Yield Investing. This book develops the blueprint for how to navigate, understand, and analyze High Yield Bonds. A must for MBA students, a requirement for anyone in the field already, and a vital tool for investors.

The book's three authors (The George Washington University Business School, Georgetown Business School, and 20+ years High Yield Experience) have used their knowledge and connections to get the best information available

This is an outstanding textbook that is worth every penny I spent on it. It has everything you need for an MBA in finance course on fixed-income securities.
This book is the only one on the subject that has several worked out examples and end of chapter problems and solutions. That is very useful if you want to master the subject. You will encounter plenty of practice opportunities.
All the other books-Tuckman, Fabozzi, Sundaresan, and the rest-while they make good reference books to have on your shelf, they are very poor textbooks to learn from.
If you want to master fixed-income securities, you need to have this textbook.

Thank you,

To even to most junior quant, this book would be content free. What's more, he promises the revolutionary new Calamos valuation method (now, not even Nobel prize winners name their theories after themselves, they let other people do it for them, so already, suspicion) but again, nothing, just some snapshots from the screen of his software. The book blurb is misleading, it actually promises the method, not just an advert for it. Do not buy this book, you will learn nothing.

The table of contents and size of this book suggests a real winner, perhaps even a Graham & Dodd treatment of the convertibles arena. The wonder is how such a long-winded tome can leave the convertibles student so wanting. The book's problem is probably the author's conflicted intentions: "Do I want my readers to go out and find some nice convertible bonds, or do I want them to pay me to go find them some nice convertible bonds?" Guess who gets short shrift?

The introduction to convertibles section is reasonably well written. But the analysis and strategy sections of the book are suspiciously hazy. I say " suspiciously " because the book's author delivers just enough information so one might be comfortable handing over portfolio management to the author's investment management firm, but not nearly enough to implement a portfolio for oneself. Even Calamos' simple price model is insufficiently described.

Thus, after a windy, winding road of nearly 400 pages, CONVERTIBLE SECURITIES reads as a mediocre introduction to convertibles imbedded within an advertisement for the Calamos firm (for which I had to pay $65!).

Upon reading this book I realized what I was missing from my portfolio. Investing in convertible over the past 3 years has enabled me to keep my head above water since the market peaked back in 2000. My portfolio was only down 4% in 2001 and 5% in 2002 because of the addition of converts.

There have been so many good books written about the yield curve that it is hard to imagine why this one was written. It is actually very similar, if not remarkably the same, to a couple of other books previously published. If you have the better written books on this subject, there is no need to buy this. If you don't have them, buy them instead.

There have been so many books about the yield curve, and all of them so mediocre. It is good to finally have one that describes and analyses the curve for everyone - money managers, bankers, investment analysts. Written in the author's trademark accessible style, this book is like nothing out there, highly recommended.

Yield Curve modeling is on of the major subjects of fixed income, a subject of great power and benefits. As the author explains eloquently (page 56) that the yield curve is very easy to grasp the basics, but difficult to become expert at. It is linked by countless equation with vast underlying framework.

Despite its forbidding nature yield curve modeling is vital component of the fixed income market. It has wide range of applications and practical importance. However, the lack understanding so often encountered leaves students and market investors with a gap between able to use the theory and being able to do so. One way of promoting understanding and bridging this gap is the method this book follows. The way of this book is to make the reader understand the subject by providing detailed explanation with carefully selected examples, show how principles and concepts may be applied to particular problem. And then offering the reader examples that differ slightly but which can be tackled by an extension of the approach that have been used previously. All this is evident in chapter one. In chapter two the author selects well motivated examples to demonstrate specific principle and concepts.

The book starts with an overview of the concept of bond yields and bond yield measurement. It then discusses the basic terminology of the yield curve. The core topics of classical yield curve are then examined in chapter two. It includes brief introduction to each topic where important results are stated and sometimes derived or reference given, followed by a number of practical example worked out in detail. Part two of the book deals with the very practical topic of yield curve modeling.

One of the powerful features of this book is that it provides relationship between theory and market practice. To sum up, the author explains all the components of the yield curve modeling at the atomic level.

Mo

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.