The Only Guide to a Winning Bond Strategy You'll Ever Need

January 9, 2006
Awkwardly organized and unduly complicated, this book provides a recitation of everything Swedroe and Hempen—co-principals of Buckingham Asset Management—know about bonds, which is a lot. The problem is that their book isn't pitched to a specific enough audience. Sophisticated investors may not mind the authors' heavy reliance on bondspeak and analytical jargon, but they will wonder why so many pages are devoted to explaining Series EE Savings Bonds. And novices will appreciate the extensive glossary, but they'll be frustrated by the book's lack of explanatory diagrams and its tendency to talk about concepts before properly introducing or defining them. The actual strategy discussion alluded to in the title is addressed only in the book's 25-page, penultimate chapter, where Swedroe and Hempen explain how to use standard techniques like laddering to construct a fixed-income portfolio. If only the preceding 10 chapters had been as succinctly written.