The Handbook of Convertible Bonds: Pricing, Strategies and Risk Management
Jan De Spiegeleer and Wim Schoutens
Wiley, $114.00

This is a complete guide to the pricing and risk management of convertible bond portfolios. Convertible bonds can be complex because they have both equity and debt like features and new market entrants will usually find that they have either a knowledge of fixed income mathematics or of equity derivatives and therefore have no idea how to incorporate credit and equity together into their existing pricing tools.

This is a highly practical book, all products priced are real world examples and numerical examples are not limited to hypothetical convertibles. It is a must read for anyone wanting to safely get into this highly liquid, high return market.

The Bond Book, third edition
Annette Thau
McGraw-Hill, $39.95

The financial crisis of 2008 caused major disruptions to every sector of the bond market and left even the savviest investors confused about the safety of their investments. To serve these investors and anyone looking to explore opportunities in fixed-income investing, former bond analyst Annette Thau builds on the features and authority that made the first two editions bestsellers in the thoroughly revised, updated, and expanded third edition of The Bond Book.

Bonds: The Unbeaten Path to Secure Investment Growth
Hildy Richelson, Stan Richelson
Wiley, $33.95

In Bonds: The Unbeaten Path to Secure Investment Growth, Second Edition, the fully revised and updated edition of the classic guide to demystifying the bonds market, veteran investor husband and wife team Hildy and Stan Richelson expose the myth of stocks’ superior investment returns and propose an all-bond portfolio as a sure-footed strategy that will ensure positive returns. Designed to educate novice and sophisticated investors alike, as well as to serve as a tool for financial advisers, the book explains why and when bonds can be the right choice. Case studies, detailed bond strategies, and a financial planning overview bring home the value of bonds in achieving financial goals.

Fixed Income Securities: Tools for Today’s Markets, third edition
Bruce Tuckman, Angel Serrart
Wiley, $114.00

Fixed-income securities traditionally promised fixed cash flows (like bonds), but with recent innovations in this field, including products for which the promised cash flows depend on the level of interest rates, a new understanding of this subject is needed. That’s why Bruce Tuckman and Angel Serrat have returned to create the Third Edition of Fixed Income Securities. Considered the go-to-guide for information on fixed income securities, this latest edition covers the most advanced thinking in the field and comprehensively shows how to value the complete universe of fixed income securities.

Included are all the latest fixed income securities valuation models and techniques, as well as expert insights on their applications in real-world situations. The Third Edition also contains two new chapters dedicated to foreign exchange markets and corporate bonds, and credit-default swaps.

Fixed Income Modelling
Claus Munk
Oxford University Press, $115.50

Fixed Income Modelling offers a unified presentation of dynamic term structure models and their applications to the pricing and risk management of fixed income securities. It explains the basic fixed income securities and their properties and uses as well as the relations between those securities. The book presents and compares the classical affine models, Heath-Jarrow-Morton models, and LIBOR market models, and demonstrates how to apply those models for the pricing of various widely traded fixed income securities. It offers a balanced presentation with both formal mathematical modelling and economic intuition and understanding.

The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor
Howard Marks
Columbia Business School Publishing, $34.50

Howard Marks, the chairman and cofounder of Oaktree Capital Management, is renowned for his insightful assessments of market opportunity and risk. Informed by a lifetime of experience and study, The Most Important Thing explains the keys to successful investment and the pitfalls that can destroy capital or ruin a career. Utilizing passages from his memos to illustrate his ideas, Marks teaches by example, detailing the development of an investment philosophy that fully acknowledges the complexities of investing and the perils of the financial world. Marks offers a volume that is part memoir, part creed, with a number of broad takeaways. Successful investing requires thoughtful attention to many separate aspects, and each of Marks’ subjects proves to be “the most important thing.”

Books to watch for in the coming months

In Your Best Interest: The Ultimate Guide to the Canadian Bond Market, third edition
W.H. Cunningham
Dundurn, $28.99 due January 2012

With more than one trillion dollars in bonds outstanding, the Canadian fixed income market is enormous. In fact, its daily trading volume is almost five times that of the equity markets. Yet investors and even many financial advisers know little about it.

In Your Best Interest demystifies the retail fixed income market, from the basics of a bond, to the various products available, to a full discussion of the mathematics of bonds and the bond market. It also provides useful tips on selecting the right adviser. This third edition of In Your Best Interest gives you the tools to meet your income and retirement needs by making the retail fixed income market less expensive, more accessible, and more efficient.

Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World
Michael Lewis
Penguin, $33.50 due October, 2011

The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers. The Greeks wanted to turn their country into a piñata stuffed with cash and allow as many citizens as possible to take a whack at it. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish. Michael Lewis’ investigation of bubbles beyond our shores is so brilliantly, sadly hilarious that it leads the American reader to a comfortable complacency: oh, those foolish foreigners. But when he turns a merciless eye on California and Washington, D.C., we see that the narrative is a trap baited with humour, and we understand the reckoning that awaits the greatest and greediest of debtor nations.