Books about Derivative from Amazon.com

“I had been in derivatives for over 25 years. Many traders hadn't been born when I stumbled accidentally into the arcane world of derivatives trading. The Indonesians were at the fag end of that career. How did I get there? I had followed the money. I had ridden the tide and currents of financial markets. I had not known very much then. Even now I only knew the many unknowns. How did I get here? It was a very long story. Send Traders, Guns and Money is that story…..”

Warren Buffet once labelled derivatives “financial weapons of mass destruction”. Unlike the military kind, financial WMD are not hard to find.  Many great companies use them.  These businesses use derivatives to make money or protect them from risk. It’s a simple case of greed or fear.  Or is it?

In derivatives, whoever you are, there are things that you don’t know that you don’t know. These are the real risks of derivatives. They’re generally left to the client to discover.   So, if you’re entering the dazzling world of derivatives, ask yourself this: What do I know? What do I need to know? What don’t I know? What am I doing?

You can find the answers in Traders, Guns & Money, a sensational and controversial first-person account of the business of derivatives trading and the financial products industry in the spirit of Liar’s Poker.  It is a true insider’s view of the business of trading and marketing derivatives for a living.  It details the nature of the business, the players, how money is made and lost, and the deceptions that underlie the entire process.

Funny and poignant, and written in a wry and wickedly comic style, the book provides the ordinary reader with an insight into the seeming madness that underlies financial markets and the out-of-control process that is trading in complex financial products that few understand.

Traders, Guns & Money  throws light on the culture, games, and pure deceptions played out every day in trading rooms around the world, and played out with other people’s money.  It describes the processes by which a small group of gifted, if avaricious, individuals parlay their knowledge of the arcane world of financial products into wealth, leaving shareholders, clients, regulators, and the tax paying ordinary public to bear most of the risk.

This is the story of how one set of clients discovered the perils of unknowns in a derivatives deal.  This tale will leave you amazed, and this book will make it all clear.In the sometimes dazzling world of derivatives, Traders Guns & Money shows you how we got here and tells it how it is. Go on, follow the money.

An accessible companion and a wise counsel, Traders, Guns & Money weaves together three core themes:

Known unkowns: if you’re entering the dazzling world of derivatives, ask yourself this:  What do I know? What do I need to know? What don’t I know? What am I doing? This book will make it all clear.

Follow the money: an insider’s, expert witness account of the rise and rules of the world of derivatives.  This book will show you how we got here and tell it how it is

Send traders guns & money:  the story of how one set of clients discovered the perils of unknowns in a derivatives deal .  This tale will leave you amazed, but wiser.

"Ever since Warren Buffett memorably described derivatives as "financial weapons of mass destruction" there has been a thriller waiting to be written about them.  Derivatives have frightened otherwise right-thinking people for some time. In part this reflects a natural tendency to fear what we do not understand."  Financial Times

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Price: $18.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Inside markets, innovation, and risk

Why do markets keep crashing and why are financial crises greater than ever before? As the risk manager to some of the leading firms on Wall Street–from Morgan Stanley to Salomon and Citigroup–and a member of some of the world’s largest hedge funds, from Moore Capital to Ziff Brothers and FrontPoint Partners, Rick Bookstaber has seen the ghost inside the machine and vividly shows us a world that is even riskier than we think. The very things done to make markets safer, have, in fact, created a world that is far more dangerous. From the 1987 crash to Citigroup closing the Salomon Arb unit, from staggering losses at UBS to the demise of Long-Term Capital Management, Bookstaber gives readers a front row seat to the management decisions made by some of the most powerful financial figures in the world that led to catastrophe, and describes the impact of his own activities on markets and market crashes. Much of the innovation of the last 30 years has wreaked havoc on the markets and cost trillions of dollars. A Demon of Our Own Design tells the story of man’s attempt to manage market risk and what it has wrought. In the process of showing what we have done, Bookstaber shines a light on what the future holds for a world where capital and power have moved from Wall Street institutions to elite and highly leveraged hedge funds..
Price: $13.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Updated and revised to reflect the most current information, this introduction to futures and options markets is ideal for those with a limited background in mathematics.

Based on Hull's Options, Futures and Other Derivatives, one of the best-selling books on Wall Street, this book presents an accessible overview of the topic without the use of calculus. Packed with numerical samples and accounts of real-life situations, the Fifth Edition effectively guides readers through the material while providing them with a host of tangible examples.

For professionals with a career in futures and options markets, financial engineering and/or risk management.

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Price: $92.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Veteran options trader Dan Passarelli explains a new methodology for option trading and valuation based on the "greeks"--the five factors that influence an option's price. Using the greeks can lead to more accurate pricing information that will lead to trading opportunities. The "greeks" (Delta, Gamma, Theta, Vega, Rho) are tools for measuring minute changes in an option's price based on corresponding changes in: interest rates, time to expiration, price changes in the underlying security, volatility, and dividends. In straightforward language and making use of charts and examples, Passarelli explains how to use the greeks to be a better options trader. With an introduction to option basics as well as chapters on all types of spreads, put-call parity and synthetic options, trading volatility and studying volatility charts, and advanced option trading, "Trading Option Greeks" holds pertinent new information on how more accurate pricing can drive profit..
Price: $33.85 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Destined to become a market classic, Dynamic Hedging is the only practical reference in exotic options hedgingand arbitrage for professional traders and money managers

Watch the professionals From central banks to brokerages to multinationals, institutional investors are flocking to a new generation of exotic and complex options contracts and derivatives. But the promise of ever larger profits also creates the potential for catastrophic trading losses. Now more than ever, the key to trading derivatives lies in implementing preventive risk management techniques that plan for and avoid these appalling downturns. Unlike other books that offer risk management for corporate treasurers, Dynamic Hedging targets the real-world needs of professional traders and money managers. Written by a leading options trader and derivatives risk advisor to global banks and exchanges, this book provides a practical, real-world methodology for monitoring and managing all the risks associated with portfolio management.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is the founder of Empirica Capital LLC, a hedge fund operator, and a fellow at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University. He has held a variety of senior derivative trading positions in New York and London and worked as an independent floor trader in Chicago. Dr. Taleb was inducted in February 2001 in the Derivatives Strategy Hall of Fame. He received an MBA from the Wharton School and a Ph.D. from University Paris-Dauphine..
Price: $60.26 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Stochastic Calculus for Finance evolved from the first ten years of the Carnegie Mellon Professional Master's program in Computational Finance. The content of this book has been used successfully with students whose mathematics background consists of calculus and calculus-based probability. The text gives both precise statements of results, plausibility arguments, and even some proofs, but more importantly intuitive explanations developed and refine through classroom experience with this material are provided. The book includes a self-contained treatment of the probability theory needed for stochastic calculus, including Brownian motion and its properties. Advanced topics include foreign exchange models, forward measures, and jump-diffusion processes.

This book is being published in two volumes. The first volume presents the binomial asset-pricing model primarily as a vehicle for introducing in the simple setting the concepts needed for the continuous-time theory in the second volume.

Chapter summaries and detailed illustrations are included. Classroom tested exercises conclude every chapter. Some of these extend the theory and others are drawn from practical problems in quantitative finance.

Advanced undergraduates and Masters level students in mathematical finance and financial engineering will find this book useful.

Steven E. Shreve is Co-Founder of the Carnegie Mellon MS Program in Computational Finance and winner of the Carnegie Mellon Doherty Prize for sustained contributions to education.

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Price: $24.48 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The answer to trading profit growth lies in derivatives All About Derivatives explains the major derivatives and their key features of each; vital mechanical issues such as storage, settle- ment, valuation, and payoff; and common types of risk and how to effectively hedge against them. Michael Durbin is known as a derivatives trader and manager for one of the world’s largest, most high-profile hedge funds.

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Price: $9.78 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The 2nd edition of this successful book has several new features. The calibration discussion of the basic LIBOR market model has been enriched considerably, with an analysis of the impact of the swaptions interpolation technique and of the exogenous instantaneous correlation on the calibration outputs. A discussion of historical estimation of the instantaneous correlation matrix and of rank reduction has been added, and a LIBOR-model consistent swaption-volatility interpolation technique has been introduced.

The old sections devoted to the smile issue in the LIBOR market model have been enlarged into several new chapters. New sections on local-volatility dynamics, and on stochastic volatility models have been added, with a thorough treatment of the recently developed uncertain-volatility approach. Examples of calibrations to real market data are now considered. 

The fast-growing interest for hybrid products has led to new chapters. A special focus here is devoted to the pricing of inflation-linked derivatives. 

The three final new chapters of this second edition are devoted to credit. Since Credit Derivatives are increasingly fundamental, and since in the reduced-form modeling framework much of the technique involved is analogous to interest-rate modeling, Credit Derivatives -- mostly Credit Default Swaps (CDS), CDS Options and Constant Maturity CDS - are discussed, building on the basic short rate-models and market models introduced earlier for the default-free market. Counterparty risk in interest rate payoff valuation is also considered, motivated by the recent Basel II framework developments.

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Price: $58.70 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Schaum's has Satisfied Students for 50 Years.

Now Schaum's Biggest Sellers are in New Editions!

For half a century, more than 40 million students have trusted Schaum's to help them study faster, learn better, and get top grades. Now Schaum's celebrates its 50th birthday with a brand-new look, a new format with hundreds of practice problems, and completely updated information to conform to the latest developments in every field of study.

Schaum's Outlines-Problem Solved

More than 100,000 sold!

This book has been updated to reflect the latest course scope and sequence. Review problems have been added after key chapters as well as more supplementary practice problems. An informal level discussion of limits, continuity, and derivatives has also been added, as well as additional information on the algebra of the dot product, exponential form of complex numbers, and conic sections in polar coordinates-plus business applications such as average rate of change, price/demand and science applications, including projectiles.

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Price: $11.08 [Notify me when price goes down.]