Enhanced Indexing Strategies by Tristan Yates

This week's featured book on options trading:

Enhanced Indexing Strategies: Utilizing Futures and Options to Achieve Higher Performance
by Tristan Yates
Wiley (November 2008)

From the publisher: Index funds are among the highest performing and most reliable investments available in the marketplace. Over the past several years, literally hundreds of index-related products have been introduced to the marketplace, most designed to provide investors with the capability to mix and match different funds in order to build custom portfolios. At the same time, leveraged investment products for the retail investor—which use borrowed capital to increase the returns within the structure of a passive investment strategy—are also one of the fastest growing products in the financial world. In Enhanced Indexing Strategies, Tristan Yates shows how to successfully combine these products using leveraged indexing to deliver better risk-adjusted returns than conventional approaches.

The idea behind leveraged investing is simple: if long-term investment returns are predictable, then even higher returns can be generated by borrowing and investing the capital over the long term in an index. Using derivatives such as futures and options, Yates reveals it is possible to not only borrow money to invest at a low rate, but also to implement hedging strategies that help reduce the risk of catastrophic losses.

Unlike other books on options trading that tell how to profit from short-term market movements, Enhanced Indexing Strategies uses options positions to capture long-term pricing trends. Using long calls and call spreads, hedging strategies, and LEAP call options—which have been hailed as an industry innovation due to their ability to maintain leverage while managing risk—Yates shows how to implement specific long-term strategies that can capture appreciation in volatile conditions across many years.

In addition to providing six different innovative long-term indexing strategies using futures and options, Yates also offers important advice on managing a leveraged investing portfolio. He covers each critical aspect of portfolio management: selecting indexes and strategies and determining the level of exposure, calculating the expected returns and the possible range of returns, and monitoring the portfolio to ensure that it is performing in accordance to projections. Yates's final piece of advice to investors is simple: get started. Every day you're not invested in an index is a missed opportunity for profits.

Also available: Enhanced Indexing Strategies (Kindle edition). Learn more about the Amazon Kindle, a wireless reading device.