Derivative-security

This book on interst rates is a pleasurable read. As a trader of interest rate swaps, I find every book on the topic adds something to my knowledge base, and this was better than most for ease of access. Anyone keen to understand all of the related markets, will also want to know more about credit derivatives.

I highly recommend "Credit Derivatives" (2nd Edition) by Tavakoli. The products and their uses are clearly explained, and ties in relative value to the interest rate market. I concede that the models for this product may be trickier because of documentation risk and data issues, but Tavakoli brings clarity to this topic so any interest rate professional can grasp the products and why investors - even hedge funds - are so keen to use them.

This book provides an excellent reference and point of view of old and new topics in the interest rate modelling field.

From short rate models, HJM model, multifactor models, positive interest models and market models, it gives you a very well explanation all without forget the calibration of them.

You can not find many books about this topic. This one gives a clear and easy to follow chapters in order to increase your knowledge of this not easy field. The formality is a key point in all the book.

This is the best book available on interest rate models. Very detailed. Much more focused and readable than Rebonato's book. More pragmatic and explicit than Musiela and Rutkowski. Not as theoretical as Hunt and Kennedy. James and Webber also looks very good, but I'm not that familiar with it. All other books have only bits and pieces on interest rates.

With all the due respect to the other authors I would say that if one is interested in a good theoretical book whihc is also good on the implementation side then the book of Brigo and Mercurion is definetly the best book I have ever read on the subject.

Anyone interested in implementing the LMM/BGM/MSS model in practice is well advised to read it.

I would just say that this is certainly a must have in the field.

In the late nineties I went through Brigo's innovative work on stochastic nonlinear filtering with differential geometry techniques. I was favorably impressed by results and style, particularly in his dissertation and in his 'geometry in present day science' very readable overview. Interesting results are found and nicely told with accurate - but not pointlessly complicated - advanced mathematics for the problems at hand, I reasoned.

I've followed a similar path from control to finance, and having worked with interest rate models, I couldn't help but order this Brigo-Mercurio book. I had high expectations 'cause these two guys are working in a bank on the real thing.

Sure enough I'm not disappointed.

1-factor models are handled with great care, a ton of formulas and recipes are given. I've never seen this kind of analysis of pricing with Gaussian 1-f models. The new upgrade of the CIR model is interesting and accurate. "CIR++" is now my favorite 1-f model. I like the treatment of lognormal 1-f models and the explanation of Monte Carlo and trees -- the flow-chart for Bermudan swaptions is crystal clear! Plots of market implied structures and volatility calibration are useful additions.

The chapter on 2-f extensions has one of the best discussions on volatility, and two tons of useful formulas/recipes. Two dimensional trees!

The HJM chapter size is OK. I agree - the useful models embedded in HJM are short rate models and market models.

Market models - these three chapters alone are worth the book. You'll find yourself nodding as you read the guided tour. They make it look easy all the time. The exposition is focused, clear, intuitive, detailed. There's also new stuff, just check the calibration discussion! Smile modeling begins with a brilliant tour and ends with Brigo-Mercurio's new approach - the mixing dynamics - deserving a whole chapter if expanded.

The detailed explanation on products is a much welcome original addition. Cross currency derivatives!

Quotes - as in Brigo's old work - are a pleasant diversion while reading. The 500 and more pages are a treat given the competitive price.

Still there's room for improvements - more "CIR2++"! Something on 3-f models. Historical estimation of the correlation matrix and low-rank optimized approximations. Expand smile modeling! More hedging. Something on structured products. Cross currency libor model. chapter 9 - other interest rate models - sounds out of place and can be suppressed for other things.

This book rings true and has useful teachings for students, academics and practitioners. Although it requires some background in stochastic calculus, it's hard to beat on the pricing front. Kudos to Brigo and Mercurio! It only harms there aren't enough books like this.

In Insurance from Underwriting to Derivaties, Eric Briys and Francois de Varenne, both Deutsche Bank insurance experts, have written a highly technical, albeit readable, book for their professional peers. They discuss property-casualty insurance, risk, securitizing, pricing and liabilities duration in the United States and Europe. However, it will dawn on the casual reader fairly early that there should be an "experts only" label on the book jacket. Even the basic introduction to property-casualty insurance begins with the presentation of complex mathematical models. More daunting models, charts and graphs elucidate information throughout. Insiders will appreciate this data and the extensive footnotes and references. While this may not be a book for the mid-management reader, we assure you, without risk, that its target audience - financial executives and professionals in the insurance industry - will be very glad to have it.

This is probably the best book on insurance for explaining the poor state of some ALM techniques used in insurance today and why. The authors correctly identify many falacies that actuaries have relied on and how they differ from the more advanced finance that has developed in banking ALM and the capital markets generally.

They do, however, get a bit distracted on a couple of topics, and bogged down in some formulas that I didn't think added much to the disccusion. In those moments, you know you're reading the work of university professors rather than practitioners.

They could have gone further with their ALM thinking. They could have discussed how mergers between insurance and banking would in the future highlight the differences between the current approaches to ALM, and how financial conglomerates will eventually just relegate insurance to one of many liability businesses, apply option-adjusted transfer prices to insurance products, and take the interest rate risk into consolidated positions. It will not be any more complicated than that. They allude to banking ALM, but don't really drive home any of what I thought were the logical conclusions. They were focused on insurance as stand-alone companies and did not address insurance in the context of a financial conglomerate.

Nonetheless, as stated, this is probably the best book on the market as an introduction to insurance ALM and helps dispell many myths and provides some useful history.

In Insurance from Underwriting to Derivaties, Eric Briys and Francois de Varenne, both Deutsche Bank insurance experts, have written a highly technical, albeit readable, book for their professional peers. They discuss property-casualty insurance, risk, securitizing, pricing and liabilities duration in the United States and Europe. However, it will dawn on the casual reader fairly early that there should be an "experts only" label on the book jacket. Even the basic introduction to property-casualty insurance begins with the presentation of complex mathematical models. More daunting models, charts and graphs elucidate information throughout. Insiders will appreciate this data and the extensive footnotes and references. While this may not be a book for the mid-management reader, we from getAbstract assure you, without risk, that its target audience - financial executives and professionals in the insurance industry - will be very glad to have it.