Preferred Stocks

What should a reader get from "Preferred Stocks: The Art of Profitable Income Investing?" A logical assumption is that this is merely a second edition of my 2007 award-winning book "Preferreds: Wall Street's Best Kept Income Secret." However, this is incorrect!


Before "Preferreds" was written, the modern investing world was flying blind when it came to preferred stocks.

That was the first book written on preferred stocks since the 1930s, and until the development of the Winans International Preferred Stock Index (WIPSI)TM, there wasn't a current benchmark to evaluate the $200 billion preferred stock market.

This was uncharted territory for investment analysis. The superior overall performance of preferred stocks was revealed. Preferreds also proved that popular technical indicators (such as the 200-day moving average) worked in identifying changes in the long-term price trends of preferred stocks from 1900-2005.

Although a winner of the 2007 Best Books Contest, many critics have attacked the book for having too many charts, or as written in the 2009 book "Investing in Preferred Stock," "There is little one can say to discourage the large world of investors who are enamored of technical analysis and momentum trading. Investors interested in applying short-term technical methods may find Preferreds to be useful."

It appears that the classic battle between technical and fundamental investors is alive and well when it comes to this security!

Needless to say, these readers missed the key points to my research. Much of what I forecasted in 2006 came true, and many of the long-term research tools discussed performed brilliantly on signaling that a new bear market arrived in preferred stocks in May 2007 (seven months prior to the financial free-fall of 2008) as well as the new uptrend in preferred stocks in April 2009. In fact, my company, Winans International Investment Management and Research, put this knowledge to work and navigated the worst investment climate since the Great Depression.

Why write a new book on preferred stock? Answer: 2008 dramatically changed everything for preferreds!

The once orphaned preferred security, with a total market capitalization of only 7% the size of the massive corporate bond market, were one of the key tools used by the U.S. government in its intervention efforts (i.e., T.A.R.P.) to stabilize the world economy during the Fall of 2008.

Since then, preferred stocks have been the best performing U.S. investment medium in 2009 (and so far in 2010) and are a darling in the financial media.

It is rare to read anything new about investing. Preferred Stock: The Art of Profitable Income Investing builds upon my past historical research from my previous books with the addition of new research (market analysis, investment analysis, etc.) as well as revised methodologies in portfolio management for successful income investing in today's environment.

It is a mystery why preferred stocks, one of the oldest exchange listed investments in existence, had fallen between the cracks in a global investment industry fixated offering as many investment products as possible. "Preferred Stock: The Art of Profitable Income Investing" shows that an unpolished investment gem has been rediscovered.

The rebirth of income investing is here to stay. Why? America's aging population has lost much of its appetite for financial volatility and has chosen the same fiscal course as their ancestors where investment income matters as much as capital appreciation.