While it may be generally classified as an investing book Buy and Hedge by Jay Pestrichelli and Wayne Ferbert could easily be classified as a trading book because of the way it advocates the use of options. I’ll leave the reader to classify it for themselves, though, based on their own definitions of the two terms.
In a nut shell, the philosophy of Buy and Hedge is that any positions one takes in the stock market (and we’re really talking long-only here) should be hedged. Individual hedging is best, but portfolio hedging is also considered acceptable by the authors. Options are the favored tool to accomplish that hedging.
About the first half of the book puts forth the reasoning and justification for hedging. Mainly it comes down to reducing the volatility of your returns. The authors make the statement that the one thing you can control in the investing process is the risk. I’m not totally comfortable with putting it that way, but I get the point they are trying to make.
The second half of the book is focused on options and option strategies which can be used for hedging purposes. In fact, the authors go so far as to recommend strategies (though not necessarily in all cases) where no position in the underlying security (stock, ETF, etc.) is held – the position is totally created with options. This is probably something that will make traditional investing advocates a bit uncomfortable.
It should also be noted that the authors don’t have anything against a straightforward index approach. They just think that it should incorporate a hedging element.
All in all, I think Buy and Hedge is a worthwhile read for those who favor playing the stock/ETF market from a longer-term position perspective.
Make sure to check out all my trading book reviews.