Derivative-security

This book is a continuation of volume 1 - being that it is purely focused on financial markets and financial products. I was looking for a book on managing risk surrounding the development of new products (i.e. goods) and services for the market place. These issues are VERY different than those surrounding financial products in a nearly efficient market. I'll keep the book for the excellent content, but beware - it's probably not what you might expect!

The chapters on Interest Rate Option Models (Riccardo Rebonato) and Calculating Risk Capital (Thomas Wilson) are great critical surveys on their respective topic

The book is a collection of disjointed but interesting essays on the general topic of equity derivatives. There is a heavy US bias in the material and none of the topics are covered in much depth. Nor does there seem to have been much in the way of editorial control over the way that essays are linked to form a theme (the treatment of covered warrants is a clear case here).

One to get if the company are paying since, in a book this big on a sparsely covered topic, there is some interesting stuff here.

This is an excellent Anthology of an often maligned and misunderstood subject. The forward is written by Fischer Black who is a pioneer in the derivatives industry. These are clearly written essays on the multiple and intelligent methods of using derivatives in varying investment environments. This is a book about financial choices and the opportunities that abound for end users of these products to hedge, diversify, insure against disaster and customize investment positions. This book should be on the desk of every Treasurer or Money Manager who is entrusted with fiduciary responsibilities.

Outdated is the only word that comes to my mind when thinking about this book. It has been edited by a finance professor who is painfully slow at solving simple mathematical equations, and I had the misfortune of having him as an instructor in Advanced Investment Analysis class. I later dropped the class, after I couldn't take any more.

Surprisingly, the content of the book is not so bad, except that the authors/editors/compilers have left out the analytical part, which is very essential to understanding derivative securities. Just learning about the structures of the instruments doesn't give a reader an ability to apply them to real-life situations. Since it is a handbook, it must carry all aspects of the subject so that the readers can use them in every possible way of reference.

Standing alone, the book is fairly decent, and I would have given it more stars, had it not been for the better alternatives available on the market. This book, as it stands now, should be skipped. If you just want to gain the peripheral knowledge on credit derivatives, log onto the internet, and search for documents. There is tonnes of information on derivative securities and their working. In fact, you might be able to find more relevant material on the web for free than this book offers you.

As an alternative, you may want to look into:

*Credit Derivatives, by Janet Tavakoli.
*Credit Derivatives, by Satyajit Das. THIS IS THE BEST BOOK AVAILABLE, AND COVERS ANALYTICAL DETAILS ADEQUATELY.

This is another book in the Frank Fabozzi vein, being a compendium of articles written by practitioners in the field and loosely strung together by the editors. As a very basic introduction, it is not bad - there are discussions of the rationale for using credit derivatives, a cursory introduction to pricing and modelling, and very general discussions of issues relating to accounting, documentation, taxes, etc. The best chapter is "Credit Derivatives Pricing Dictionary," by Hardy M. Hodges, which provides definitions of some of the most important concepts and would stand quite well on its own. However, if you expect something more than generalities, you will be disappointed. There is very little by way of practical advice on structuring, modelling or other "nuts and bolt' issues. This book will teach you enough to get past the HR department, but if you want to get on the trading desk you had better look elsewhere!

Commercial bankers, investment bankers, financial lawyers, finance professors, and (at least) one accountant who were in on the creation of credit derivatives during the mid-1990s author chapters that are non-mathematical. (Well, I guess Harvard Business School Professor Sanjiv Das's credit derivatives pricing chapter is kind of mathematical.) Each chapter author is expert in the aspect of credit derivatives about which they write. Every commercial banker in the world should read up on this subject.

The Definitive 4-in-1 Reference Guide to Alternative Assets Many books cover individual alternative asset classes, but none offers a comprehensive examination of the four major classes as presented in the Handbook of Alternative Assets. This complete handbook merges data and strategies scattered in numerous volumes into one handy guide for the serious investor. The four major classes discussed are: Hedge funds Commodity and managed futures Private equity Credit derivatives Organized by sections-one for each alternative asset class-the Handbook of Alternative Assets demonstrates the benefits and risks of each alternative asset and reveals how these asset classes can be incorporated into a diversified portfolio. Through expert advice, the Handbook of Alternative Assets details each of four major alternative asset classes and breaks down their quantitative statistical value as well. With this comprehensive handbook on your desk, you'll begin to use alternative asset classes to both hedge and expand any portfolio.
The Handbook of Alternative Assets discusses and describes four types of alternative assets: hedge funds, private equity, credit derivatives and commodity futures.

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I used this book for my preparations towards CAIA Level 1 exam. And I am impressed. Mr. Anson is an authority and this is truely a great book for Alternative Investment aspirants.

If you want to have a very solid grasp of any of the following alternative investment approaches then this is the book you should turn to -

Hedge funds
Commodity and managed futures
Private equity (5 catagories)
....Venture Capital
....LBOs
....Mezzannine Financing
....Distressed Debt

....CrossOver/Interval/PIPE and PEPE funds
Credit derivatives
Corporate Governance

Mr. Anson helps you build strong fundamentals. Actually he clearly explains what constitutes Alternative Assets(Aha !!!) as against fundamental and/or capital assets and what is meant by alternative investment strategies.

This is followed by a rigorous analysis of the topics listed above in that order.

I particularly enjoyed his coverage of Hedge Funds. He explains each of the 10 Hedge Fund strategies in a systematic fashion. From a variety of angles including Market(S&P500), Risk, Regulatory, Due Diligence/Operational/Administrative perspective.

The coverage of Commodity Derivatives is also superb. Although confined to 4 chapters this coverage is sufficient to gain an intermediate level insight into the Commodities.

The coverage for Private Equity is less comprehensive(but good) compared to it's actual scope in real world. I particularly expected a more rigorous coverage for LBOs.

Although I did not touch credit derivatives and CorpGov I could tell you for sure that these topics must have been covered well.
As I read 19 out of 22 chapters.

To put it in a nutshell - This is a very good book for Hedge fund aspirants and prospective Alternative investment professionals.

For more info about CAIA please visit www.caia.org.

wow, incredible improvement to the first edition. coverage of all important aspects (i can think of) on inflation. history, example issues, purpose of use from investor & issuer as well as technical points regarding calculation and pricings.

Even more than Wilmott's book, C&S's book gets into the details of pricing derivatives. The choice of topics is truly excellent, and the copious source code included is a superb move. I am currently using this book (and others) to teach a class in Financial Programming.On the other hand, errors are frustratingly frequent. Not so much in the source code, but in the prose. It would be nice to see a floppy disk of code come with the book, a la Hull. There are no exercises in the text, which I consider to be an egregious error, because exercises are really the only way to learn the material.C&S try to make finite difference schemes seem less intimidating by expressing them in terms of probabilities (to stress the link between trees and more general lattices). This works OK for explicit schemes, but for the more important implicit and Crank Nicolson schemes is weird and unnatural. It fails to give the reader any clue as to how to do finite differencing on his own. (Their odd changes of variables don't help, either.) Wilmott's treatment of the subject of finite differencing is far superior.

This is a much needed resource for financial engineers which provides the step by step details with repeatable examples necessary to implement the models covered in the book. Far too many authors and academics show their arrogance and lack of interest in providing the level of information needed by their readers to actually implement the material covered in their books on derivatives models. This book is the exception.

Authors have succeeded remarkably well in providing studends and practitioners with a book on derivatives concentrating purely on numerical methods. The writing and notation is clear and free of unnecessary staff. Focus is never lost. Almost all aspects that are relevant are covered. However, for the next edition to make the book perfect, I suggest that authors add little more on newer term structure models; HJM, BGM, etc. Also a short chapter on zero estimation would be great, since the building block of term structure derivatives needs to be supplied before derivative price calculations start. Probably even credit derivatives, since that area is currently blossoming. Authors do a particularly outstanding job in presenting the more difficult term structure calculations and they give an excellent treatment of the forward algorithm. Well, what can I say ? In conclusion, an outstanding book, well worth the price.

This book is not a good tome for risk managers, for marketers, or for quantitative professionals. It's as if Nelken read some articles and cobbled up this book. Waste of time and money.

This book will give risk managers something to think about when they start to implement credit derivatives as part of the strategy.

You can understand the concept of credit derivatives