Dynamic Hedging: Managing Vanilla and Exotic Options


Nassim Nicholas Taleb - 1996
    From central banks to brokerages to multinationals, institutional investors are flocking to a new generation of exotic and complex options contracts and derivatives. But the promise of ever larger profits also creates the potential for catastrophic trading losses. Now more than ever, the key to trading derivatives lies in implementing preventive risk management techniques that plan for and avoid these appalling downturns. Unlike other books that offer risk management for corporate treasurers, Dynamic Hedging targets the real-world needs of professional traders and money managers. Written by a leading options trader and derivatives risk advisor to global banks and exchanges, this book provides a practical, real-world methodology for monitoring and managing all the risks associated with portfolio management. Nassim Nicholas Taleb is the founder of Empirica Capital LLC, a hedge fund operator, and a fellow at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University. He has held a variety of senior derivative trading positions in New York and London and worked as an independent floor trader in Chicago. Dr. Taleb was inducted in February 2001 in the Derivatives Strategy Hall of Fame. He received an MBA from the Wharton School and a Ph.D. from University Paris-Dauphine.

How to Day Trade for a Living: A Beginner's Guide to Trading Tools and Tactics, Money Management, Discipline and Trading Psychology


Andrew Aziz - 2016
    As a day trader, you can live and work anywhere in the world. You can decide when to work and when not to work. You only answer to yourself. That is the life of the successful day trader. Many people aspire to it, but very few succeed. Day trading is not gambling or an online poker game. To be successful at day trading you need the right tools and you need to be motivated, to work hard, and to persevere.At the beginning of my trading career, a pharmaceutical company announced some positive results for one of its drugs and its stock jumped from $1 to over $55 in just two days. Two days! I was a beginner at the time. I was the amateur. I purchased 1,000 shares at $4 and sold them at over $10. On my very first beginner trade, I made $6,000 in a matter of minutes.It was pure luck. I honestly had no idea what I was doing. Within a few weeks I had lost that entire $6,000 by making mistakes in other trades. I was lucky. My first stupid trade was my lucky one. Other people are not so lucky. For many, their first mistake is their last trade because in just a few minutes, in one simple trade, they lose all of the money they had worked so hard for. With their account at zero, they walk away from day trading.As a new day trader you should never lose sight of the fact that you are competing with professional traders on Wall Street and other experienced traders around the world who are very serious, highly equipped with advanced education and tools, and most importantly, committed to making money.In How to Day Trade for a Living, I will show you how you too can take control over your life and have success in day trading on the stock market. I love teaching. It's my passion. In this book, I use simple and easy to understand words to explain the strategies and concepts you need to know to launch yourself into day trading on the stock market. This book is definitely NOT a difficult, technical, hard to understand, complicated and complex guide to the stock market. It's concise. It's practical. It's written for everyone. You can learn how to beat Wall Street at its own game.

Systematic Trading: A unique new method for designing trading and investing systems


Robert Carver - 2015
    This is a complete guide to developing your own systems to help you make and execute trading and investing decisions. It is intended for everyone who wishes to systematise their financial decision making, either completely or to some degree.Author Robert Carver draws on financial theory, his experience managing systematic hedge fund strategies and his own in-depth research to explain why systematic trading makes sense and demonstrates how it can be done safely and profitably. Every aspect, from creating trading rules to position sizing, is thoroughly explained. The framework described here can be used with all assets, including equities, bonds, forex and commodities.There is no magic formula that will guarantee success, but cutting out simple mistakes will improve your performance. You'll learn how to avoid common pitfalls such as over-complicating your strategy, being too optimistic about likely returns, taking excessive risks and trading too frequently.Important features include:- The theory behind systematic trading: why and when it works, and when it doesn't.- Simple and effective ways to design effective strategies.- A complete position management framework which can be adapted for your needs.- How fully systematic traders can create or adapt trading rules to forecast prices.- Making discretionary trading decisions within a systematic framework for position management.- Why traditional long only investors should use systems to ensure proper diversification, and avoid costly and unnecessary portfolio churn.- Adapting strategies depending on the cost of trading and how much capital is being used.- Practical examples from UK, US and international markets showing how the framework can be used.Systematic Trading is detailed, comprehensive and full of practical advice. It provides a unique new approach to system development and a must for anyone considering using systems to make some, or all, of their investment decisions.

Trading Price Action Trends: Technical Analysis of Price Charts Bar by Bar for the Serious Trader


Al Brooks - 2011
    Author Al Brooks has done just that. By simplifying his trading system and trading only 5-minute price charts he's found a way to capture profits regardless of market direction or economic climate. His first book, Reading Price Charts Bar by Bar, offered an informative examination of his system, but it didn't allow him to get into the real nuts and bolts of the approach. Now, with this new series of books, Brooks takes you step by step through the entire process.By breaking down his trading system into its simplest pieces: institutional piggybacking or trend trading (the topic of this particular book in the series), trading ranges, and transitions or reversals, this three book series offers access to Brooks' successful methodology. Price Action Trends Bar by Bar describes in detail what individual bars and combinations of bars can tell a trader about what institutions are doing. This is critical because the key to making money in trading is to piggyback institutions and you cannot do that unless you understand what the charts are telling you about their behavior. This book will allow you to see what type of trend is unfolding, so can use techniques that are specific to that type of trend to place the right trades.Discusses how to profit from institutional trading trends using technical analysis Outlines a detailed and original trading approach developed over the author's successful career as an independent trader Other books in the series include Price Action Trading Ranges Bar by Bar and Price Action Reversals Bar by BarIf you're looking to make the most of your time in today's markets the trading insights found in Price Action Trends Bar by Bar will help you achieve this goal.

Security Analysis: Principles and Technique


Benjamin Graham - 1934
    No investment book in history had either the immediate impact, or the long-term relevance and value, of its first edition in 1934. By 1951, seventeen years past its original publication and more than a decade beyond its revised and acclaimed 1940 second edition, authors Benjamin Graham and David Dodd had seen business and investment markets travel from the depths of Depression to the heights of recovery, and had observed investor behavior during both the calm of peacetime and the chaos of World War II.The prescient thinking and insight displayed by Graham and Dodd in the first two editions of Security Analysis reached new heights in the third edition. In words that could just as easily have been written today as fifty years ago, they detail techniques and strategies for attaining success as individual investors, as well as the responsibilities of corporate decision makers to build shareholder value and transparency for those investors.The focus of the book, however, remains its timeless guidance and advice--that careful analysis of balance sheets is the primary road to investment success, with all other considerations little more than distractions. The authors had seen and survived the Great Depression as well as the political and financial instabilities of World War II and were now better able to outline a program for sensible and profitable investing in the latter half of the century.Security Analysis: The Classic 1951 Edition marks the return of this long-out-of-print work to the investment canon. It will reacquaint you with the foundations of value investing--more relevant than ever in tumultuous twenty-first century markets--and allow you to own the third installment in what has come to be regarded as the most accessible and usable title in the history of investment publishing.

Beat the Market: A Scientific Stock Market System


Edward O. Thorp - 1967
    Details are given of actual investments made by the authors, one of whom more then doubled $100,000 in five years.

A Template for Understanding Big Debt Crises


Ray Dalio - 2018
    This template allowed his firm, Bridgewater Associates, to anticipate events and navigate them well while others struggled badly.  As he explained in his #1 New York Times Bestseller, Principles: Life & Work, Dalio believes that most everything happens over and over again through time so that by studying their patterns one can understand the cause-effect relationships behind them and develop principles for dealing with them well. In this 3-part research series, he does that for big debt crises and shares his template in the hopes reducing the chances of big debt crises happening and helping them be better managed in the future.  The template comes in three parts provided in three books: 1) The Archetypal Big Debt Cycle (which explains the template), 2) 3 Detailed Cases (which examines in depth the 2008 financial crisis, the 1930's Great Depression, and the 1920's inflationary depression of Germany's Weimar Republic), and 3) Compendium of 48 Cases (which is a compendium of charts and brief descriptions of the worst debt crises of the last 100 years). Whether you're an investor, a policy maker, or are simply interested, the unconventional perspective of one of the few people who navigated the crises successfully, A Template for Understanding Big Debt Crises will help you understand the economy and markets in revealing new ways.

Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom


Van K. Tharp - 1998
    With substantial new material, this second edition features Tharp's new 17-step trading model. Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom also addresses reward to risk multiples, as well as insightful new interviews with top traders, and features updated examples and charts.

Volatility Trading (Wiley Trading)


Euan Sinclair - 2008
    With an accessible, straightforward approach. He guides traders through the basics of option pricing, volatility measurement, hedging, money management, and trade evaluation. In addition, Sinclair explains the often-overlooked psychological aspects of trading, revealing both how behavioral psychology can create market conditions traders can take advantage of-and how it can lead them astray. Psychological biases, he asserts, are probably the drivers behind most sources of edge available to a volatility trader. Your goal, Sinclair explains, must be clearly defined and easily expressed-if you cannot explain it in one sentence, you probably aren't completely clear about what it is. The same applies to your statistical edge. If you do not know exactly what your edge is, you shouldn't trade. He shows how, in addition to the numerical evaluation of a potential trade, you should be able to identify and evaluate the reason why implied volatility is priced where it is, that is, why an edge exists. This means it is also necessary to be on top of recent news stories, sector trends, and behavioral psychology. Finally, Sinclair underscores why trades need to be sized correctly, which means that each trade is evaluated according to its projected return and risk in the overall context of your goals. As the author concludes, while we also need to pay attention to seemingly mundane things like having good execution software, a comfortable office, and getting enough sleep, it is knowledge that is the ultimate source of edge. So, all else being equal, the trader with the greater knowledge will be the more successful. This book, and its companion CD-ROM, will provide that knowledge. The CD-ROM includes spreadsheets designed to help you forecast volatility and evaluate trades together with simulation engines.

Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond


Bruce C. Greenwald - 2001
    Some of the savviest people on Wall Street have taken his Columbia Business School executive education course on the subject. Now this dynamic and popular teacher, with some colleagues, reveals the fundamental principles of value investing, the one investment technique that has proven itself consistently over time. After covering general techniques of value investing, the book proceeds to illustrate their applications through profiles of Warren Buffett, Michael Price, Mario Gabellio, and other successful value investors. A number of case studies highlight the techniques in practice. Bruce C. N. Greenwald (New York, NY) is the Robert Heilbrunn Professor of Finance and Asset Management at Columbia University. Judd Kahn, PhD (New York, NY), is a member of Morningside Value Investors. Paul D. Sonkin (New York, NY) is the investment manager of the Hummingbird Value Fund. Michael van Biema (New York, NY) is an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University.

Understanding Stocks


Michael Sincere - 2003
    New chapters cover short selling, alternative investments such as commodities and bonds, and candlestick charting.Michael Sincere is a full-time columnist, writer, and author of nine books, including "The After-Hours Trader, Understanding Options," and "All About Market Indicators."

Market Wizards


Jack D. Schwager - 1989
    What separates the world's top traders from the vast majority of unsuccessful investors? Jack Schwager sets out to answer tis question in his interviews with superstar money-makers including Bruce Kovner, Richard Dennis, Paul Tudor Jones, Michel Steinhardt, Ed Seykota, Marty Schwartz, Tom Baldwin, and more in "Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders," now in paperback and ebook.This classic interview-style investment text from a financial expert is a must-read for traders and professional financiers alike, as well as anyone interested in gaining insight into how the world of finance really works.Filled with anecdotes about market experiences, including the story of a trader who after wiping out several times, turned $30,000 into $80 million and an electrical engineer from MIT whose computerized trading has earned returns of 250,000 percent over sixteen yearsIdentifies the factors that define a successful traderNow availabe as in digital formats.One of the most insightful, bestselling trading books of all time.

Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor


Seth A. Klarman - 1991
    The myriad approaches they adopt offer little or no real prospect for long-term success and invariably run the risk of considerable economic loss - they resemble speculation or outright gambling, not a coherent investment program. But value investing - the strategy of investing in securities trading at an appreciable discount from underlying value - has a long history - has a long history of delivering excellent investment results with limited downside risk. Taking its title from Benjamin Graham's often-repeated admonition to invest always with a margin of safety, Klarman's 'Margin of Safety' explains the philosophy of value investing, and perhaps more importantly, the logic behind it, demonstrating why it succeeds while other approaches fail. The blueprint that Klarman offers, if carefully followed, offers the investor the strong possibility of investment success with limited risk. 'Margin of Safety' shows you not just how to invest but how to think deeply about investing - to understand the rationale behind the rules to appreciate why they work when they work, and why they don't when they don't.

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator


Edwin Lefèvre - 1923
    Generations of readers have found that it has more to teach them about markets and people than years of experience. This is a timeless tale that will enrich your life--and your portfolio.

Technical Analysis of Stock Trends


Robert D. Edwards - 1948
    It revolutionized technical investment approaches and showed traders and investors how to make money regardless of what the market is doing. Now in its ninth edition, the book remains the benchmark by which all other investment methodologies are measured. An indispensable reference for technical traders, investors, and finance professionals, the ninth edition features:* Expanded treatment of Magee's ""basing points"" procedure* In-depth discussion and dissection of Dow Theory* Extensive new material on commodity trading* Much-needed perspective on short-term and futures tradingThe newest incarnation of one of the true classics of market analysis, this book will be a crucial resource for both seasoned veterans and the new generation alike."