Financial-future

This guide provides an extremely clear introduction to derivatives, including futures, options and swaps. The book's heavy use of charts and other graphics, and friendly layout, makes it especially easy to follow. Though it provides only basic information about strategy and pricing, it does clearly outline the risk profiles of several common derivatives trades. This book won't help you master the Black-Scholes option pricing formula, but it will give you a solid understanding of how derivatives work. Overall, a very good introduction.

I used this book to teach a Financial Mathematics course, and found its explanations to be generally clear and good. However, part of the reason the text seems so clear is that it doesn't explain much of what's really going on. It covers the right material, but not really in such a way that the reader can then go on to apply the knowledge gained.This is evidenced by the complete (and almost unforgiveable) lack of exercises in the book. It is very easy to feel you understand this sort of material, only to be completely lost when you actually have to solve a problem. Neftci will not help in this regard. I understand that it is difficult to create good exercises, but their absence almost makes me wonder if Neftci realized he was not explaining things in enough detail to let the student actually work with the knowledge. Exercises are the only way to really learn this subject.A basic problem with all these texts is that, try as they might, they cannot impart true understanding unless the student can grasp real analysis at, say, an undergraduate level typically reached by students at a good engineering school. This text tries to avoid the problem by failing to mention any of the analysis...that's not likely to work.

I've read Hull, Wilmott and Baxter books but definitely like this book better - particularly for entry (but not easy) level derivative math. Can't say much since English is not my first language. But if you want to learn about Derivative Math and don't have strong background in Math (I'm a Porfolio Manager and have pretty good background in Calculus, Differential Equation, Econometrics) this book is certainly worth considering. I give 4 stars due to the lack of practice problems.

Students of derivative pricing techniques are often in a dilemma: Coming from their MBA or undergrad course, they have just build a "brealy-myers" type of intuition on options. Moving towards Hull then allows a deeper understanding. But any serious (eg PhD, Wall Street Analyst) student of derivatives needs to undertstand the math behind modern derivatives pricing. Essentially, this research divides into two streams: Solving Partial differential equations and developing equivalent Martingales. Without a rigorous pre-education (Maths, Physics), most students fail to understand (let alone learn to use) these methods. Nefci is the only book that does not assume lots of prior knowledge, as compared to Merton (1992) or Duffie (who is so bold to write "for mathematical preparation little beyong undergraduate analysis...is assumed" -ask PhD Students how easy this book reads! The answer is its tough!!). In Short, Neftci's book is a true blessing for all "normal" people. Can't wait to get the second edition!

The book contains a wealth of practical information however there are errors in the mathematical formulas, dates and etc. This is most frustrating from a reader point of view and dampened the confidence in the material presented. However, it is relatively a easy read for general understanding of the money and FX markets. I hope the author does a more thorough check in the future edition in order to do this book justice.

This is a great practical book for the beginners and intermediate people in the market. When I started in the market as a business analyst, with no prior experience, it was a confused world of trading. After reading this book, things make much more sense. In addition, the book explains brief analytics on how to price and when and why certain instruments will be used for trading. It is geared towards trading. Refer to other books if you are more interested in middle/back office functionality (like settlements, P&L calc, risk management etc.)

Many a times, trainers in the banking industry find it very difficult to teach complex subjects like foreign exchange and money markets to relatively junior guys. This book will prove to be of great help to those trainers. Probably the first ever attempt in this subject.( Luca's text book can easily be replaced by this book just because of its excellant padagogy). Hope other titles advertised by RFT will also become available soon, specially the one on Risk Management.