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.

Options, Futures and Other Derivatives


John C. Hull
    Changes in the fifth edition include: A new chapter on credit derivatives (Chapter 21). New! Business Snapshots highlight real-world situations and relevant issues. The first six chapters have been -reorganized to better meet the needs of students and .instructors. A new release of the Excel-based software, DerivaGem, is included with each text. A useful Solutions Manual/Study Guide, which includes the worked-out answers to the "Questions and Problems" sections of each chapter, can be purchased separately (ISBN: 0-13-144570-7).

Algorithmic Trading And DMA: An Introduction To Direct Access Trading Strategies


Barry Johnson - 2010
    This book starts from the ground up to provide detailed explanations of both these techniques: - An introduction to the different types of execution is followed by a review of market microstructure theory. Throughout the book examples from empirical studies bridge the gap between the theory and practice of trading. - Orders are the fundamental building blocks for any strategy. Market, limit, stop, hidden, iceberg, peg, routed and immediate-or-cancel orders are all described with illustrated examples. - Trading algorithms are explained and compared using charts to show potential trading patterns. TWAP, VWAP, Percent of Volume, Minimal Impact, Implementation Shortfall, Adaptive Shortfall, Market On Close and Pairs trading algorithms are all covered, together with common variations. - Transaction costs can have a significant effect on investment returns. An in-depth example shows how these may be broken down into constituents such as market impact, timing risk, spread and opportunity cost and other fees. - Coverage includes all the major asset classes, from equities to fixed income, foreign exchange and derivatives. Detailed overviews for each of the world's major markets are provided in the appendices. - Order placement and execution tactics are covered in more detail, as well as potential enhancements (such as short-term forecasts), for those interested in the specifics of implementing these strategies. - Cutting edge applications such as portfolio and multi-asset trading are also considered, as are handling news and data mining/artificial intelligence.

Stochastic Calculus Models for Finance II: Continuous Time Models (Springer Finance)


Steven E. Shreve - 2004
    The content of this book has been used successfully with students whose mathematics background consists of calculus and calculus-based probability. The text gives both precise statements of results, plausibility arguments, and even some proofs, but more importantly intuitive explanations developed and refine through classroom experience with this material are provided. The book includes a self-contained treatment of the probability theory needed for shastic calculus, including Brownian motion and its properties. Advanced topics include foreign exchange models, forward measures, and jump-diffusion processes.This book is being published in two volumes. This second volume develops shastic calculus, martingales, risk-neutral pricing, exotic options and term structure models, all in continuous time.Masters level students and researchers in mathematical finance and financial engineering will find this book useful.Steven E. Shreve is Co-Founder of the Carnegie Mellon MS Program in Computational Finance and winner of the Carnegie Mellon Doherty Prize for sustained contributions to education.

Trading and Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practitioners


Larry Harris - 2002
    Readers will learn about investors, brokers, dealers, arbitrageurs, retail traders, day traders, rogue traders, and gamblers; exchanges, boards of trade, dealer networks, ECNs (electronic communications networks), crossing markets, and pink sheets. Also covered in this text are single price auctions, open outcry auctions, and brokered markets limit orders, market orders, and stop orders. Finally, the author covers the areas of program trades, blocktrades, and short trades, price priority, time precedence, public order precedence, and display precedence, insider trading, scalping, and bluffing, and investing, speculating, and gambling.

Evidence-Based Technical Analysis: Applying the Scientific Method and Statistical Inference to Trading Signals


David Aronson - 2006
    Throughout the book, expert David Aronson provides you with comprehensive coverage of this new methodology, which is specifically designed for evaluating the performance of rules/signals that are discovered by data mining.

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.

Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data


Charles Wheelan - 2012
    How can we catch schools that cheat on standardized tests? How does Netflix know which movies you’ll like? What is causing the rising incidence of autism? As best-selling author Charles Wheelan shows us in Naked Statistics, the right data and a few well-chosen statistical tools can help us answer these questions and more.For those who slept through Stats 101, this book is a lifesaver. Wheelan strips away the arcane and technical details and focuses on the underlying intuition that drives statistical analysis. He clarifies key concepts such as inference, correlation, and regression analysis, reveals how biased or careless parties can manipulate or misrepresent data, and shows us how brilliant and creative researchers are exploiting the valuable data from natural experiments to tackle thorny questions.And in Wheelan’s trademark style, there’s not a dull page in sight. You’ll encounter clever Schlitz Beer marketers leveraging basic probability, an International Sausage Festival illuminating the tenets of the central limit theorem, and a head-scratching choice from the famous game show Let’s Make a Deal—and you’ll come away with insights each time. With the wit, accessibility, and sheer fun that turned Naked Economics into a bestseller, Wheelan defies the odds yet again by bringing another essential, formerly unglamorous discipline to life.

The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It


Scott Patterson - 2010
     They were preparing to compete in a poker tournament with million-dollar stakes, but those numbers meant nothing to them.  They were accustomed to risking billions.     At the card table that night was Peter Muller, an eccentric, whip-smart whiz kid who’d studied theoretical mathematics at Princeton and now managed a fabulously successful hedge fund called PDT…when he wasn’t playing his keyboard for morning commuters on the New York subway.  With him was Ken Griffin, who as an undergraduate trading convertible bonds out of his Harvard dorm room had outsmarted the Wall Street pros and made money in one of the worst bear markets of all time.  Now he was the tough-as-nails head of Citadel Investment Group, one of the most powerful money machines on earth. There too were Cliff Asness, the sharp-tongued, mercurial founder of the hedge fund AQR, a man as famous for his computer-smashing rages as for his brilliance, and Boaz Weinstein, chess life-master and king of the credit default swap, who while juggling $30 billion worth of positions for Deutsche Bank found time for frequent visits to Las Vegas with the famed MIT card-counting team.     On that night in 2006, these four men and their cohorts were the new kings of Wall Street.  Muller, Griffin, Asness, and Weinstein were among the best and brightest of a  new breed, the quants.  Over the prior twenty years, this species of math whiz --technocrats who make billions not with gut calls or fundamental analysis but with formulas and high-speed computers-- had usurped the testosterone-fueled, kill-or-be-killed risk-takers who’d long been the alpha males the world’s largest casino.  The quants believed that a dizzying, indecipherable-to-mere-mortals cocktail of differential calculus, quantum physics, and advanced geometry held the key to reaping riches from the financial markets.  And they helped create a digitized money-trading machine that could shift billions around the globe with the click of a mouse.     Few realized that night, though, that in creating this unprecedented machine, men like Muller, Griffin, Asness and Weinstein had sowed the seeds for history’s greatest financial disaster.     Drawing on unprecedented access to these four number-crunching titans, The Quants tells the inside story of what they thought and felt in the days and weeks when they helplessly watched much of their net worth vaporize – and wondered just how their mind-bending formulas and genius-level IQ’s had led them so wrong, so fast.  Had their years of success been dumb luck, fool’s gold, a good run that could come to an end on any given day?  What if The Truth they sought -- the secret of the markets -- wasn’t knowable? Worse, what if there wasn’t any Truth?   In The Quants, Scott Patterson tells the story not just of these men, but of Jim Simons, the reclusive founder of the most successful hedge fund in history; Aaron Brown, the quant who used his math skills to humiliate Wall Street’s old guard at their trademark game of Liar’s Poker, and years later found himself with a front-row seat to the rapid emergence of mortgage-backed securities; and gadflies and dissenters such as Paul Wilmott, Nassim Taleb, and Benoit Mandelbrot.     With the immediacy of today’s NASDAQ close and the timeless power of a Greek tragedy, The Quants is at once a masterpiece of explanatory journalism, a gripping tale of ambition and hubris…and an ominous warning about Wall Street’s future.

Heard on The Street: Quantitative Questions from Wall Street Job Interviews


Timothy Falcon Crack - 2000
    The interviewers use the same questions year-after-year and here they are---with solutions! These questions come from all types of interviews (corporate finance, sales and trading, quant research, etc), but they are especially likely in quantitative capital markets job interviews. The questions come from all levels of interviews (undergrad, MBA, PhD), but they are especially likely if you have, or almost have, an MS or MBA. The latest edition includes over 120 non-quantitative actual interview questions, and a new section on interview technique---based partly on Dr. Crack's experiences interviewing candidates for the world's largest institutional asset manager. Dr. Crack has a PhD from MIT. He has won many teaching awards and has publications in the top academic, practitioner, and teaching journals in finance. He has degrees in Mathematics/Statistics, Finance, and Financial Economics and a diploma in Accounting/Finance. Dr. Crack taught at the university level for 20 years including four years as a front line teaching assistant for MBA students at MIT. He recently headed a quantitative active equity research team at the world's largest institutional money manager.

Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street


William Poundstone - 2006
    One was mathematician Claude Shannon, neurotic father of our digital age, whose genius is ranked with Einstein's. The other was John L. Kelly Jr., a Texas-born, gun-toting physicist. Together they applied the science of information theory—the basis of computers and the Internet—to the problem of making as much money as possible, as fast as possible.Shannon and MIT mathematician Edward O. Thorp took the "Kelly formula" to Las Vegas. It worked. They realized that there was even more money to be made in the stock market. Thorp used the Kelly system with his phenomenonally successful hedge fund, Princeton-Newport Partners. Shannon became a successful investor, too, topping even Warren Buffett's rate of return. Fortune's Formula traces how the Kelly formula sparked controversy even as it made fortunes at racetracks, casinos, and trading desks. It reveals the dark side of this alluring scheme, which is founded on exploiting an insider's edge.Shannon believed it was possible for a smart investor to beat the market—and Fortune's Formula will convince you that he was right.

Investment Science


David G. Luenberger - 2013
    Luenberger, known for his ability to make complex ideas simple, presents essential ideas of investments and their applications, offering students the most comprehensive treatment of the subject available.

Inside the Black Box: The Simple Truth about Quantitative Trading


Rishi K. Narang - 2009
    His explanation and classification of alpha will enlighten even a seasoned veteran." ?Blair Hull, Founder, Hull Trading & Matlock Trading"Rishi provides a comprehensive overview of quantitative investing that should prove useful both to those allocating money to quant strategies and those interested in becoming quants themselves. Rishi's experience as a well-respected quant fund of funds manager and his solid relationships with many practitioners provide ample useful material for his work." ?Peter Muller, Head of Process Driven Trading, Morgan Stanley"A very readable book bringing much needed insight into a subject matter that is not often covered. Provides a framework and guidance that should be valuable to both existing investors and those looking to invest in this area for the first time. Many quants should also benefit from reading this book." ?Steve Evans, Managing Director of Quantitative Trading, Tudor Investment Corporation"Without complex formulae, Narang, himself a leading practitioner, provides an insightful taxonomy of systematic trading strategies in liquid instruments and a framework for considering quantitative strategies within a portfolio. This guide enables an investor to cut through the hype and pretense of secrecy surrounding quantitative strategies." ?Ross Garon, Managing Director, Quantitative Strategies, S.A.C. Capital Advisors, L.P."Inside the Black Box is a comprehensive, yet easy read. Rishi Narang provides a simple framework for understanding quantitative money management and proves that it is not a black box but rather a glass box for those inside." ?Jean-Pierre Aguilar, former founder and CEO, Capital Fund Management"This book is great for anyone who wants to understand quant trading, without digging in to the equations. It explains the subject in intuitive, economic terms." ?Steven Drobny, founder, Drobny Global Asset Management, and author, Inside the House of Money"Rishi Narang does an excellent job demystifying how quants work, in an accessible and fun read. This book should occupy a key spot on anyone's bookshelf who is interested in understanding how this ever increasing part of the investment universe actually operates."?Matthew S. Rothman, PhD, Global Head of Quantitative Equity Strategies Barclays Capital"Inside the Black Box provides a comprehensive and intuitive introduction to "quant" strategies. It succinctly explains the building blocks of such strategies and how they fit together, while conveying the myriad possibilities and design details it takes to build a successful model driven investment strategy." ?Asriel Levin, PhD, Managing Member, Menta Capital, LLC

The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution


Gregory Zuckerman - 2019
    No other investor--Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Ray Dalio, Steve Cohen, or George Soros--can touch his record. Since 1988, Renaissance's signature Medallion fund has generated average annual returns of 66 percent. The firm has earned profits of more than $100 billion; Simons is worth twenty-three billion dollars.Drawing on unprecedented access to Simons and dozens of current and former employees, Zuckerman, a veteran Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, tells the gripping story of how a world-class mathematician and former code breaker mastered the market. Simons pioneered a data-driven, algorithmic approach that's sweeping the world.As Renaissance became a market force, its executives began influencing the world beyond finance. Simons became a major figure in scientific research, education, and liberal politics. Senior executive Robert Mercer is more responsible than anyone else for the Trump presidency, placing Steve Bannon in the campaign and funding Trump's victorious 2016 effort. Mercer also impacted the campaign behind Brexit.The Man Who Solved the Market is a portrait of a modern-day Midas who remade markets in his own image, but failed to anticipate how his success would impact his firm and his country. It's also a story of what Simons's revolution means for the rest of us.

Option Volatility & Pricing: Advanced Trading Strategies and Techniques


Sheldon Natenberg - 1988
    Drawing on his experience as a professional trader, author Sheldon Natenberg examines both the theory and reality of option trading. He presents the foundations of option theory explaining how this theory can be used to identify and exploit trading opportunities. "Option Volatility & Pricing" teaches you to use a wide variety of trading strategies and shows you how to select the strategy that best fits your view of market conditions and individual risk tolerance.New sections include: Expanded coverage of stock option Strategies for stock index futures and options A broader, more in-depth discussion volatility Analysis of volatility skews Intermarket spreading with options