Market Risk Analysis, Pricing, Hedging and Trading Financial Instruments (The Wiley Finance Series)

Excellent mathematical approach with Excel examples that I love transform into Matlab code.

To get so much into about 400 pages the treatment has to be pretty concise, which it is, so having loads of examples really helps. From the finance viewpoint this book is pretty complete. However, it is not entirely self-contained, since there are lots of cross references to the first volume, for the mathematics and a fair few to the second volume, especially for principal component analysis. Its strength is the clarification of options and of volatility models in particular. It's nicely written and really clarified some of the more complex material. The chapter on volatility contains as much as Gatheral's book, and in more digestible form for someone who isn't a maths PhD. I'm really enjoying reading this book - the text flows easily, notation is well defined - it's not a struggle to learn!

If one really wants to understand Volatility Dynamics from a practical point of view,there is probably nothing better than this book (and the rest of the Risk's books for completeness). This is because it is written by someone that truly understand the markets and adopt a practical approach (in CD-ROM you can see all the models, simulations ....) and therefore has no difficulty in explaining it in simple terms.This book helps to close the gap between the theoretical level achieved/employed in Math Finance MSc an Phds on the one hand, and their practical implementation on the other hand.Special mention should be given to the Volatility and Portfolio Mapping chapters.In addition to these chapters, there are very comrehensive chapters abt different Derivative contracts -from vanilla to more exotics claims-.It's difficult to find books that combine both a theoretical framework and a practical approach (CD-ROM with codes available allows you to track/understand the models, simulations ...) using very recent data - in some cases with data ubtil Dc'07 !!!! -Risks' Book collection is called to become a classic reference in Math Finance literature.

Well written, well explained. Many comprehensive examples.

Carol Alexander work is only to show off her math skills. she does not exert effort to simplify the matters or show concisely the applications of the formula. reading her books i have a feeling is that her joy is confined to filling the pages with formula and arcane symbols

Nice product.