Rating: 
Summary: Not the Book I Hoped It Would Be
Review: I was disappointed with this book. I read every page from beginning to end. The reasons for his strategy are interesting but as other reviewers point out here at Amazon, the actual part where he shows you how to use his method is really bad. It has mistakes. It talks about the S&P Industrial Index when it means the SP500 Index. I get the feeling that Michael farmed the last part of the book out to the coauthor. Whatever I suggest just reading the end of the book at the bookstore.
Rating: 
Summary: Hire an editor
Review: I'm disappointed in the quality of this book. O'higgins is probably on to something, but the explanation he offers on how to use his method is just about incomprehensible. Did no one bother to read this book before shoving it out the door? I really tried to like this book, but it just has so many errors, you're better off checking it out of the library.
Rating: 
Summary: Phew - just in time!
Review: Many people here didn't like the editing, and rated the book badly as a result. Personally, I bought the book for the content, which was by and large very good, and a very enjoyable and eye-opening read. I'm glad I followed his advice too - today 22nd May my original stock portfolio dived well below what I paid for it, despite the "Dog Dow" strategy. I think it's got a long way to go, too.Personally speaking, I think that if you're even only slightly interested in the subject, give it a read (whether or not you agree with my opinion about the stock market!), it takes the uninitiated through the TWO most important/fundamental instruments in the financial markets (i.e., there's more to life than equities). The quote on the back says "a wake-up call for the equity obsessed". Couldn't agree more!
Rating: 
Summary: Thanks for the reminder.
Review: Michael O'Higgins latest book may be a timely reminder that stocks are not always the best investment. The systematic method of investing that is espoused in the book is simple, and easy to follow. It annually moves investments to one of three asset classes: stocks, bonds or Treasury bills. In recent years, I have heard a lot arguments about this bull market in equities being a new and different investment era. I have heard little about investing in bonds and have heard nothing about investing in cash investments such as Treasury bills. Thanks for the reminder.
Rating:
Summary: A Truly Low-Risk Strategy to Achieve Above-Average Returns!
Review: Michael O'Higgins' long-awaited second book provides welcome and timely advice for a wide variety of investors! O'Higgins convincingly presents a specific and simple strategy for achieving above-average returns on investments at relatively low risk, using either stocks, T-bills, or T-bonds as warranted. It is a strategy well worth following, especially in periods of speculation. O'Higgins' strategy is both simple and sophisticated, and can be easily understood and implemented by individual investors, although I understand that there is now an O'Higgins mutual fund that presumably uses the investment system touted in the book and does the work for us. I am truly pleased that O'Higgins has realized the importance of a solid understanding of the positive role that certain bonds can play in one's investment choices. Bravo, Michael O'Higgins!
Rating:
Summary: Poorly edited. Why was it rushed to print?
Review: O'Higgins has summarized his approach to making a switch from stocks to bonds on pages 165 to 170. The problem is the instructions for calculating yields and yield differences are confusing and unintelligible. The BTDWB allocation strategy results are summarized over a thirty year period in a table on page 151-152. The BTDWB would have selected 1-year TBills as the optimum investment nine times since 1972. But the data presented shows T-Bills were not the best investment eight out of nine times. This book and BTDWB strategy is flawed. I wish I could get my money back.
Rating:
Summary: Short on content and poorly edited, but important
Review: O'Higgins' "Beating the Dow with Bonds" is an updated version of his very successful "Beating the Dow" which outlined the now well-known "Dogs of the Dow" strategy. In his new book O'Higgins presents a simple system whereby investors decide at the beginning of each year whether their money should be in treasury bills, treasury bonds, or stocks. Simply stated, O'Higgins recommends investing in stocks only when the average yield (the inverse of P/E: E/P) of the S&P 500 exceeds the yield on government bonds. If this is not the case, then one uses the change in the price of gold is an indicator of inflation to decide whether to invest in US Treasury bills or US Government zero-coupon bonds. While I find the strategy interesting, and am persuaded that the stock market is tremendously overvalued at present (a main point of the book), I think that this information could have been presented in 10 to 15 pages. O'Higgins reiterates the same information over and over again, and the book is the full of what I consider "filler." A full 65 pages (one fourth of the book!) contains synopses of the 30 companies comprising the Dow Industrials. Four pages list "selected" discount brokerage firms addresses. I have very little patience for sloppy editing. Between O' Higgins, his cowriter (John McCarty) and their editor I would expect such glaring errors as missing words in sentences (not to mention nonsensical sentences) would not make it to publication. They did. In summary, I would recommend that interested readers check out a copy from their local library and read pages 166 through 170. After reading this outline of O' Higgins' method, thumbing through previous chapters (noting the figures) will provide a quick, and probably useful, overview of his rationale. O'Higgins is making some very important points in "Beating the Dow with Bonds," and he is certainly a well-respected market veteran (as he points out on a number of occasions), but due to the rambling nature of the book and the sloppy editing I cannot recommend its purchase.
Rating:
Summary: This is an awful book...
Review: O'Higgnins's conclusions may or may not be correct (he says stocks are headed for a severe downturn; it's time to turn to bonds); but he bases that conclusion on an amateurish analysis that simply ignores valid counter-arguments instead of dealing with them. He then proposes that you time the market and jump in and out of stocks based on a timing indicator: The price of gold. He doesn't give you any reason why that indicator should be valid, he merely tells you that it would have been right in 29 of the last 30 years (or something like that). He could as well have proposed using the AFL/NFL Super Bowl Winner as his indicator. If you just want to try a "system", whether or not it makes any sense, this may be for you. If you want to understand what you're doing, look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Sloppy, Hasty, and all too brief
Review: The basic idea in this book (invest in bonds when they yield more than stocks) has been around for years; we should be grateful the idea was written-up in a way to attract attention -- but, as with other popular investing books of the moment (cf. Ken Lee's Trounce The Dow), there's an awful lot of filler and plenty of indications that literacy was not the editor's primary concern.
Rating:
Summary: It doesn't work, even in the past
Review: The biggest problem I see with this book (besides the entire premise of timing the "overvalued" market) is that it doesn't even work with the historic data he choose to show in his book! I've seen lots of books that are entirely backtested and don't work in the future, but this is a new one. The stock market has been overvalued since 1980? He's stuck in T-Bills with his +5% in years where the BTD5 are doing +30%. It's too bad he feld the need to put his name on this total piece of trash, and start it with the words "Beating the Dow...". The original BTD (and the assortment of improved variants of it that now exist) was, and still is, worthwhile. I'm glad I skimmed it in the store instead of buying it.
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