Commodity-markets

Extremely readable. One could read this book in a single sitting and get a great jumpstart to an understanding of fixed income markets - the why and the how.

Wiseman has an engaging style of writing which prevents the stifled yawns normally associated with reading this genre, and keeps one turning the pages...

The book nicely covers the fundamental theory of why there exists a fixed income market, then turns to the players and discusses what they do, and finally covers some of the fundamental trading strategies and math employed to turn a buck.

Nice one...

i found this book very well written. It provides detail and yet covers that what it says it does. I find that Wiseman explains concepts in a verystraight forward way. Although i had to pause to eat and think about some of the financial products discussed such as "par yields". I found I was able to understand the book. The book contains some of the trader jargon and a outline of the players involved in the market. I think that anyone who wants to something with securities or trading should read this, before/during/after an intership. As the english say "Wiseman" is the dogs ballocks!! get this book!

"This book is about mathematical tools". That's the first sentence of Vince, who as it turns out markets his books as heavy on math. I'd bet that he never had college classes in math, or physics, or finance for that matter. His book is full of mathematical depths like explaining why 1+2*3 is equal to 7, not to 9, or giving four reasons why asterisks is the best symbol for multiplication. Another brilliant example is when he illustrates how to combine three assets with different weights: 10% of A, 10% of B, 80% of C; 10% of A, 20% of B, 70% of C, and then three more pages of other different combinations. General math level of this book is a level of B-student in the seventh grade who has never derived a mathematical formula or proved mathematical fact. Then, considerable part of the book is authors comments on trading wisdom, like "first loss is the best loss". Then, there are some ramblings on normal ditributions and Capital asset pricing theory. About 60 pages are appendices on completely irrelevant topics like he writes Black-Scholes formula, or normal distribution, or his grandiose program duplicated in C and Basic.

The "stuff" of this book, which is the so-called "f-ratio" is explained on about ten pages. You can understand it, although it is not a clear explanation. Better probably to read it where the author got it in the first place. It is difficult to say if f-ratio has much practical importance because of assumption of indefinite divisibility of trading contracts.

Most of all this book reminded me a project done overnight for a school or college class where you put a little stuff in the middle and then pad it for volume with anything you can come up with because you need to satisfy the minimum length requirement.

The problem with optimal f is that the calculation is highly dependent on the largest loss on a trade (not drawdown) experienced in backtesting. If you use optimal f and the largest loss in actual trading is greater than the loss experienced in backtesting, you will go bankrupt. Vince deals with this problem in an offhanded manner by suggesting that the actual f you use should be "padded". OK, so in the end you don't even use the actual optimal f, you pad it. And how much do I pad it by? Vince is silent on this question. So the purpose of optimal f - to decide by formula how much capital to allocate to a trade - is totally negated by the fact that you must "pad" optimal f. And you must pad it by a qualitativly determined amount because, again, Vince gives no formula on how much to pad it by. Optimal f is totally useless for system traders or any other trader for that matter.

... this book is incredible. I have a degree in mathematics and the principles expressed are extremely sound -- but far more important than the formulas are the first couple of chapters which cause you to view trading in a very different, and statistical, manner. Although the theories in this book can really only be applied to a trading system (which I haven't really used), after reading this book over several times I understand that there is a mathematical certainty that I will eventually lose my trading capital if I don't start approaching trading in a more systematic fashion. Anyway, I highly recommend it -- the sections on gambling theory alone are worth buying it.

Not for the speculative trader. Baird explains neutrality and hedging scenarios in great detail. Explains some esoteric concepts rarely discussed, such as time spread risk and delta drift. Very succinct explanation on arb spreads and combos, and the tendency to trade to the pin at expiration. Highly recommended.

I highly recommend this book for a basic, clean, non-pretentious presentation of option trading from a market maker's point of view. Baird can also write English: very clear, linear, simple prose. The man has no axes to grind or ego trips to take, and he knows what he's talking about, and gives very practical advice.

Although this book is not for beginners, it doesn't contain any formulas. Instead it focuses on all the complex aspects of making a market for options. I've read this book over and over again on a regular interval to remind me on the way market makers do their practice, and how to avoid the pitfalls in trading against specialists.