Derivative-security

This book comes in between Wilmott and the more technical books.
And its by no means complete, if you want a more comprehensive treatment you may want to buy wilmott.
And if you need something more technical you should
get the book by Oskendal and/or Nielsen.

If you want to get an inexpensive book then go for this.

In recent years bookshelves (and readers) have groaned under the weight of new First Courses in Mathematical Finance. There is, of course, a huge overlap in content and it is no easy task to write a book which is both better than its predecessors and genuinely novel. In both tasks Mark Joshi has succeeded admirably: this book deserves to become the leader in its field.

Finding the right level of mathematical sophistication is a difficult balancing act in which it is impossible to please all readers. Here, the author has had a clear vision that the principal audience is the practising or potential quantitative analyst (or quant) and writes accordingly; it is impossible to do better than taking an approach of this sort. Such a quant must have a certain minimum level of mathematical background (a good degree in a numerate discipline). By definition, this has to be assumed for a decent understanding of the material, but the author always has an eye on what a quant really needs to know. Integrated into this mathematical work is a good deal of information about how markets, banks and other corporations operate in practice, not found in more academically-oriented books.

The first half of the book includes the core material found in any decent first course on the subject including basic stochastic calculus, pricing of European options through discounted expectation under a risk-neutral measure, the Black-Scholes differential equation and so forth. Where this book really stands out, however, is the exceptional clarity with which the key concepts are separated. Not only are three different ways for deriving the Black-Scholes formula presented (through PDEs, expectation, and the limit of discrete tree-models) ; much more significantly, the different roles played by hedging, replication and equivalent martingale measures in enforcing a price are made crystal clear. In whatever way you already think about this material, you will almost certainly come away with something new from reading this treatment. In my case, for example, I gained a much greater understanding of why "risk-neutral" pricing is so called.

The second half of the book, roughly speaking, covers a selection of more sophisticated material. The major areas covered include interest-rate derivatives and models; and more complicated models for stock price evolution (such as stochastic-volatility, jump-diffusion and variance-gamma) that have been proposed to correct inadequacies in the Black-Scholes model such as its failure to explain market smiles. Once the core ideas have been so thoroughly explained in the first half, a great deal of interesting and diverse material can be covered rapidly yet with a great deal of clarity and coherence, relating the new models to core ideas such as uniqueness of prices and hedging issues.

Those with quantitative finance experience are still likely to find a good deal that is new and worthwhile in this book. And if you a thinking about becoming a quant, I cannot think of a better book to read first.

This is the most comprehensive and up to date textbook on quantitative finance that I have seen so far. Joshi is an excellent mathematician and an excellent quant. He knows finance like the back of his hand, and explains it very well.

A book with ostensibly some structure but lacks any logical lead through. I defy anyone to make sense of his few pages on structured bonds - all he says is that they're risky and those in the know have told him that many people do not understand them. I empathize with this lack of understanding - the author shares it.

The author has a bizarre bullet point writing system - certain sentences are pulled out for emphasis for no good reason. The book is littered with grammatical errors.

A real dud, spare your money.

Do not buy this book. If you own it, don't bother reading it. The information content is negligible. The English is appallingly bad. Material often has nothing to do with the sections to which it pertains. The book is written in a stream-of-consciousness rambling mode with no apparent logic. With 115 books to his credit, Mr. Chorafas is obviously in the business of churning out books on current topics, whether or not (and based on the evidence from this book, it is very much "not") he has any knowledge or experience with the subject. Prentice Hall should be ashamed to be associated as the publisher, and obviously did very little editing before publishing the book.

This is one of the worst books I have ever read. I was lucky to sell it on zShops for half of face value. Clearly, this guy has little or no experience with crederivs, and his weak command of English just makes it worse. While I think Nelken's book is also a little thin on material, and Tavakoli's book represents a somewhat dated view of the market, both are substantially more educational than this one. My own experience suggests that one is far better off to understand bond/loan trading first, plus some structuring and capital allocation. That is enough to figure out how to trade crederivs. All this hype about the insane risk in these things is crap - it's not substantially more risky than bonds, and people have been in that business for a long time. The only essential difference - counterparty risk - is not really addressed in any satisfactory manner anywhere.

This book provides an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of credit derivatives. Tavakoli provides an excellent resource for credit risk managers who specialize in one area of credit risk management, professionals who are new to the field, or for experienced professionals who need the definitive reference of credit derivatives products.
This book is not about is the mathematical and statistical details in credit risk/portfolio modeling, but Tavakoli does a good job of highlighting various aspects of modeling (such as data availability, limitations of different approaches, etc.). For example, Tavakoli's explanation of first-to-default baskets provides a quantitative explanation of boundary conditions and a qualitative explanation of the products.

The clear, qualitative, conceptual explanations are supported by explanations that show a deep understanding of the underlying mathematics. Numerically minded readers will grasp this, but even those who are a bit numbers shy will find the quantitative examples easy to follow. Tavakoli's book enabled me to discuss the assessment and deployment of quantitative models on an even footing with professional risk managers and the rocket scientists developing these models.

I also recommend Phillip Schonbucher's book on credit derivatives for people who need to model credit derivatives. Unfortunately, the resource doesn't exist that can solve the tough problem of estimating correlation between defaults.

The use and misuse of credit derivatives terminology is thoroughly explained in this book. After that, the products applications are introduced. The difference between insurance and credit derivatives is clearly explained. From the insurance perspective, examples of using credit derivatives to change capital structure are very helpful.

The basic structures of synthetic collateralized debt obligations are introduced in this book, but more details and the cash flows are explained in Tavakoli's newer book. This book focuses on the credit derivatives market and the peculiarities of this market.
Tavakoli's book is an excellent credit derivatives guide for both newcomers (who are finance professionals) and insurance/finance professionals who need a thorough overview of the various the products. All of the major structures of credit derivatives are explained. The new indexes aren't included in this edition, but index products of other sorts are included, so the structural form is introduced here.

The qualitative narratives are very helpful in explaining how the products are traded. These are supplemented with deal diagrams and tables of information. The author's firm command of the subject matter makes this book very readable and easy for finance professionals to understand. Professionals who are not looking for a heavy quant book but want a clear understanding of how these products are used and the guideposts for value will enjoy this book.

The documentation shown in this book is especially useful for lawyers and people customizing trades. This is particularly useful if you want to include features that offer greater value to you than "standard" documentation. Tavakoli includes basic documentation for each of the major products.

POSITIVE POINTS: Best indepth book on Credit Derivatives. Very readable. Explains very nicely why this derivatives are so important for banks. Non technical.

NEGATIVE POINTS: Focus on banks with only a little chapter on Credit Derivatives as investment products. No explanation how those derivatives are priced (but hey, there are loads of technical books)

Mark Anson manages to write one of the most horrible books about derivatives. Mr.Anson's ideas are dated and wouldn't be much help to anyone. I feel sorry for the CalPERS fund if this is the brainpower they have running it.

despite being new (june 99) this book does not bring much new knowledge

Mr. Anson writes a very interesting, and easy to read book about a very difficult subject. Anybody who is interested in credit derivatives should definitely buy this book.

While developments in this industry move very fast, this book remains one of my favourites for covering the basics of structured derivatives.

On such a topic, it is very easy to get carried away with complex mathematics and jargon, but this author handles the task very well. Topics such as quantifying risk, measuring swap valuations and understanding complex options are explained in a way most of us will understand.

This book is not for the beginner, but is more aimed at those with an average or above average understanding of derivatives.

They claim there are more than 130 exercises, but don't provide solutions. You need to be a teacher to get a password from their web site to get an access to them. It's very dissapointing. What use of them?

The behavior of large economic systems is by necessity unpredictable, for if it was, then the making of speculative profit would be impossible. The movement of markets is modeled as an example of Brownian motion, which is a consequence of the random motion of molecules. This is a complex process, where the only hope to predict the future is to apply statistical methods. Therefore, this book is largely a lesson in creating statistical models of random processes that allow for calculus methods to be used to analyze them.
The primary model is that of a discrete parameter martingale, which is where different price possibilities are computed based on probabilities that the parameter will have certain values. After years of teaching calculus, this is the first book that I have read where the concentration is on using calculus to model financial systems. Without question, I learned more new material from this book than I have in at least 90% of the math books that I have read. It was fascinating to see how a non-differentiable system is modeled so that it is then possible to use the continuous methods of calculus in working with it.
This book is perfect for advanced courses in the modeling of financial markets. The amount of calculus knowledge needed to understand the material is that of the standard three course sequence that is the start of nearly all undergraduate majors. A course in statistics based on calculus is also essential, and experience in differential equations would also be helpful, although not required.

The only reason that it does not get a fifth star is that there are no solutions to the exercises. I am a firm believer that solutions to at least 1/3 the problems should be included in any mathematics book.

Published in the recreational mathematics e-mail newsletter, reprinted with permission.