Rating: 
Summary: Biased by Interest Rate Movements
Review: During most of the study period, interest rates have been on a steady and dramatic decline. This spelled rising bond prices and excellent returns for bonds. Thus the book looks in "hind-sight" for a method that is bound to work. Watch out!!
Rating: 
Summary: Poor editing makes me wish for my money back
Review: Here is the book in a nutshell: Stocks are overpriced, so buy bondsPage 166 has an asset allocation worksheet for your pleasure, but good luck using it...the text instructions have at least one error and Step 8 is very unclear. I'm much happier with "Stocks for the Long Term" by Jeremy Siegel, also available here at Amazon
Rating:
Summary: Interesting...but confusing
Review: I agree with much of what has already been said as far as the amount of filler and the editorial glitches. And can anyone figure out the last chart -- table 11.1? These numbers make no sense and don't even correspond with the info on table 9.1. I began the book with some excitement but ended up feeling very uncertain about the method.
Rating:
Summary: 10% of this book is education about Bonds; 90% stock basics
Review: I bought this book because I wanted to learn more about investment products OTHER than common stocks. Instead, (in the book on tape), I got 5-10 minutes about the different types of bonds, a little detail about T-bills, and the frank admission that this book "doesn't really discuss corporate bonds". WHAT!? The whole rest of it is spent preparing you to run for cover for the upcoming crash of 2000 - for that, I must say he was prescient (Too bad I didn't read this in 1999!). More time is spent describing the basics of common stocks, and how the major industrial averages are calculated than is spent on bonds! Oh - and that WRONG formula for computing the price/sales ratio erroniously also made it onto the cassette version. I actually had to rewind the tape to see if I had heard correctly!
Rating: 
Summary: Informative, insightful reading
Review: I enjoyed this book thoroughly. It gave an alternative view to straight stock investing and it made sense. I hope to take advantage of the philosophy soon... Peter Ahlering
Rating:
Summary: Worth Reading
Review: I found BTDWB worth reading. It is required reading for followers of formula investing, such as its predecessor, BTD. I now have a better appreciation for the meaning of the PE ratio (and its relation to risk), and alternatives in investing such as government securities. I find it very interesting that many of the online brokerages today do not even offer government securities (except as a mixed bag in a mutual fund). Realizing that fact alone has made this book very valuable to me, as I seek out a brokerage firm that will not limit my investing opportunities.
Rating:
Summary: Not enough content; poor research.
Review: I gave the author 2 stars because I agree with him on one basic premise - equities are generally overvalued. However, I found the rest of the book to be entirely lacking. First, it severely lacks content. The book is short to begin with - and what few pages it has are spent poorly. Almost 1/3 of the book is dedicated to descriptions of the 30 DOW companies. His investment strategy is simple. In fact, it's too simple. His conclusions are based upon very little research - nothing more than historic data that just happens to work out. He has some valid points (i.e. zero coupon bonds as investments), but spent very little effort crafting it. The knowledge encapsulated within the 200+ pages of this book could be condensed to a single web page with little effort.
Rating: 
Summary: I got what I paid for
Review: I really can't defend this book, other than to say, "It told me what I wanted to know." Higgins' original Beating The Dow was my first introduction to the wonderful world of investment literature some ten years ago, so my purchase of this latest one was not an impartial decision. What's ironic about the existence of BTD With Bonds is that at the end of the original book, Higgins plainly showed that mixing his original Beating The Dow theory with other investments only weakened it. So why did I buy this book? I wanted a very clear, easy to understand book about investing in bonds. And that is what I got. While I probably won't be following the investment advice in this book, I did find it a pleasant alternative to Bonds for Dummies, or some similar title.
Rating:
Summary: Spectacular, confusing, inconsistent
Review: I think the ideas in this book are absolutely crucial to investors, but I'm dissappointed by its inconsistencies & omissions. There is no concrete demonstration of how O'Higgins arrived at such spectacular returns, for example, in a particular year, by investing in zero-coupon bonds. 24% annual return is awesome, but it would be nice to see an example of how this would happen in a particular year, some hard data for the novice investor to see (not just total annual returns, year by year). Especially someone (like me) who knows virtually nothing about bonds are finds it hard to beleive that this "safe" investment could provide an 80% return in _one year_. He does not go through even one example to illustrate the process of allocation of his portfolio, so there are some details that I have not figured out after several readings. He also suggests in his section about stocks that he will later explain how to invest in small-caps, since they outperform blue-chips over time, but he never does, at least not in _this_ book! (Maybe this book was pieced together from sections of his old book, Beating the Dow?) I am deeply suspicious that no one edited this book as a whole work, that it was a cut-and-paste job with some new chapters on bonds. Some information he provides like pieces of a puzzle and later uses, expecting the reader to put the pieces together. An example is the use of the change in the price of gold as an indicator of inflation, about which one of the earlier reviews complained. Rather than taking on faith many of his derivations, I think I'm going to have to do some more research before I follow this strategy. That's my main gripe -- there is still work for me to do after reading this book, to confirm the annual percentages and cumulative returns that he claims. I am, however, convinced by this book of the value of bonds in an investment portfolio, and of the importance of contrarianism when it comes to investing.
Rating:
Summary: Spectacular, confusing, inconsistent
Review: I think the ideas in this book are absolutely crucial to investors, but I'm dissappointed by its inconsistencies & omissions. There is no concrete demonstration of how O'Higgins arrived at such spectacular returns, for example, in a particular year, by investing in zero-coupon bonds. 24% annual return is awesome, but it would be nice to see an example of how this would happen in a particular year, some hard data for the novice investor to see (not just total annual returns, year by year). Especially someone (like me) who knows virtually nothing about bonds are finds it hard to beleive that this "safe" investment could provide an 80% return in _one year_. He does not go through even one example to illustrate the process of allocation of his portfolio, so there are some details that I have not figured out after several readings. He also suggests in his section about stocks that he will later explain how to invest in small-caps, since they outperform blue-chips over time, but he never does, at least not in _this_ book! (Maybe this book was pieced together from sections of his old book, Beating the Dow?) I am deeply suspicious that no one edited this book as a whole work, that it was a cut-and-paste job with some new chapters on bonds. Some information he provides like pieces of a puzzle and later uses, expecting the reader to put the pieces together. An example is the use of the change in the price of gold as an indicator of inflation, about which one of the earlier reviews complained. Rather than taking on faith many of his derivations, I think I'm going to have to do some more research before I follow this strategy. That's my main gripe -- there is still work for me to do after reading this book, to confirm the annual percentages and cumulative returns that he claims. I am, however, convinced by this book of the value of bonds in an investment portfolio, and of the importance of contrarianism when it comes to investing.
| 
