Derivative-security

Customized Deriviatives does two things that most books on options do not: 1)Provide 2-3 page in-depth descriptions of many exotic derivates and 2)Illustrate the decision process that is required to model these options using lattices. By using lattices to describe the option pricing process, Ravindran avoids producing yet another dreary options book full of equations and succeeds in producing something that somebody with less than a masters in math can understand. This may not be info that an options expert would find necessary but I had fun using this book to throw models together in conjunction with my quantitative finance class. Next to Haug's "Guide to Option Pricing Formulas", this is the most useful options book I own.

The book provides alot of intuition and explaination for a topic that is usually not explained well. i would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in marketing of exotic derivatives.

This book covers so much in the derivatives marketplace. After being involved in the business for 12 years and writing three books on futures and commodity derivatives I was definitely refreshed and enlightened by Mr.DeRosa's book.

DeRosa has picked excellent papers. If one reads the papers in detail, the currency derivatives literature, as well as related derivatives literature, becomes very easy to understand.

This book presents highly technical papers on diverse topics from variuous academics. It would be very helpful to anyone looking to understand theoretical aspects of FX derivatives. Since most papers are written by different authors, notation is not consistent. In addition, academics do not always write like Hemingway. Nevertheless, the book covers everyhting from vanillas to exotics very well.

This book on credit derivatives models is written by an academic without a feel for how the market trades in practice. Schonbucher presents the mathematical equations without expanding on the meaning of the models or their application.

There are some errors of fact when he discusses how certain products work, such as first-to-default baskets, a serious error in and of itself, but unfortunately there are additional similar errors which show the author has an imperfect understanding of the market he writes about. All in all this book was an unsatisfying treatment of the topic.

Nice equations, but hasn't kept up with Ph.D.'s who work on Wall Street and know the theory, thoroughly understand the products, and can apply practical but theoretically sound compromises to accommodate reality. Ph.D.'s at work in finance - including myself (physics) - are probably too busy to write the definitive modelling book. This book fails to address key ingredients such as daycounts, settlement conventions, documentation asymmetry, and more.

The state of theory is in such tremendous flux at present with a majority of research unpublished and a growing consensus that the state of the art is entirely inadequate. No book could possibly please industry researchers at this point, but Philipp contributes some ideas and clarification here and there and some leads which are valuable. He is perhaps a little dismissive and pessimistic when the theory wanders into hard mathematical problems, and to to a large extent his book ends where the fun stuff begins. Nontheless I would recommend, especially to those entering the field.

I dislike this book for a number of reasons. Firstly it is incomprehensible, especially the examples. Some of the concepts are also not well explained. Secondly, it is not user-friendly. The ideas demonstrated are not presented in a coherent manner. Lastly, being basically a compilation from different authors, the chapters are also not well connected to each other. Overall a very poor effort.

About half the chapters are written by various accountants employed by Price Waterhouse. Only 2 out of about 20 chapter authors are recognizable names in the field.

When it comes to Derivative products, pricing, valuation, the markets, and all the other issues, such as rating, documentation, accounting and taxation, you could not get a better mentor than Satyajit DAS, and this book is his best ever. It is a collection of topics and authors who are the leaders and the best in the field. THERE is simply NO other book that can be called a HANDBOOK on Derivatives, for everyone, students, financial professions, and professors, and for beginners, as well as advanced.

This book has nothing new in spite of being released in 2003. Many key issues receive inadequate explanations, and the sections written by different authors do not merge well. If you have no experience with the market, this is not a good book to start you off. If you have experience with the market, there is no reason to buy this book.

This is yet another of Fabozzi's contributed works that ends up with poor flow. I'm not sure why this book was written, since it isn't nearly as good or as comprehensive as previous works, and doesn't represent the best writers in this field. For instance, Schonbucher's work on pricing is far superior to anything presented here.

This book brings together some high quality talent and it shows - a good buy and a useful reference on credit derivatives.