KIRKUS REVIEW
Wall Streeters used to say that investors couldn't buy the market--they had to pick individual issues. No more: February 1982 marked the introduction of trading in futures contracts on stock indexes, like the Value Line Composite (VLC) and Standard & Poor's 500 (S&P 500), that reflect broad market movement; less than a year later, options on indexes made their debut. Ansbacher, a stockbroker and sometimes author (How to Profit from the Coming Bull Market, 1981), is enthusiastic about these highly leveraged investments--as, indeed, are investors. (Daily trading volume, in dollars, already exceeds that of the New York Stock Exchange.) Nonetheless he's careful to point out that neophytes have no business in either stock--index futures or the options based on them. (The futures field, for one thing, is a zero-sum game--for every dollar made, another must be lost.) That said, he sets forth the leveraged profit opportunities afforded by these commodity-like contracts, which can be bought on margins of 10 percent or less. He also examines the pros and cons of marketplace choices--the NYSE Composite and CBOE-100 (Chicago Board Options Exchange entry), in addition to the S&P 500 and VLC. (Dun & Bradstreet has blocked use of its product.) Included is an A-to-Z course on short and long trading strategies for options, as well as stock-index futures. Some of Ansbacher's flights of analytical fancy will send even market sophisticates to their computer terminals; his one serious deficiency is scant attention to taxes. The first on this particular scene, and high-grade.