Beating the Indexes: Investing in Convertible Bonds to Improve Performance and Reduce Risk, CourseSmart eTextbook

The notion that investors can't beat the market is simply no longer true. What is true is that if you rely on the standard investing methods used by some professionals, you will never exceed the indexes. When investors try to just keep up with the indexes, they are settling for mediocrity. Fact is, as indexing and quasi-indexing have become more prevalent, the dangers of this strategy have become more pronounced: a bias toward overvalued, overgrown, large-cap stocks likely to hit long periods of underperformance. But there's good news: If you're willing to invest a bit more of your own time, you have a much better chance of beating the pros than they want you to think. In Beating the Indexes, leading trader and Minyanville columnist Bill Feingold shows you how to systematically exploit the biases and mediocrity of index investors, and continuously make winning investments. Writing for sophisticated individual investors as well as professional advisors and money managers, Feingold introduces a more profitable set of investing strategies based on alternative investments such as convertible bonds and related securities. Each chapter of this book exposes one myth in index investing, and includes a strategy to exploit that myth -- and beat the conventional investors who still buy into it. If you're tired of minimal returns that disappear with the slightest market volatility, this is the book you've been searching for.

Foreword     xv
Preface     xix
Introduction     1

Part I: Our Flawed Institutions
Chapter 1  Indexing and Its Discontents     7
Chapter 2  The Individual’s Edge     25
Chapter 3  Delusions and Illusions: Chasing Performance in Our Lost Decade     43
Chapter 4  A Change is Gonna Come     51

Part II: Convertibles, a Better Solution
Chapter 5  The Very Basics     61
Chapter 6  Reminiscences of a Convertible Operator     69
Chapter 7  A Quick Review and Quiz     121
Chapter 8  Enough Already…How Do Convertibles Actually Work?     145
Chapter 9  What to Look for in a Convertible     177
Chapter 10  Convertibles For…     201
                  I. Individual Investors     201
                 II. Financial Advisors     213
                III. Nontraditional Institutional Investors     217
                 IV. Corporate Financial Officers     231
                  V. Students     249
Chapter 11  Introduction to Advanced Topics     257
Suggestions for Further Reading     285
Glossary     287
Index     291