Exotic-option

One of the best books on this topic. It is a very practical book for someone with practical background. No sigma algebra to confuse you, and you do not have to know Girsanov to understand the quanto effect. You just focus on those tough issues you are running into everyday: correlations, long dated FX, cross Gamma hedging, strategic risk management for an exotic book, transaction cost in illiquide market, and so on. In addition, last paragraph of the book is the every reason make me think why this book stands out among these many books.

I find this book extremely useful in my job. It covers almost all aspects of exotic and hybrid instruments: the real life examples, theory behind the pricing models, implementation using different numerical methods, hedging and risk management issues, a good appendix on the basic math stuff and even a sample VBA code to do multivariate MC. Most importantly, the author took a practitioner's point of view, which makes the materials much easier to be understood and applied. However, I did encounter quite a few errors inside some of the formulas. Just name a few, Eq 3.15 and 3.18 on pg 53, Eq 3.142 on pg 98 and Eq H.61 on pg 336. However, none of them is serious (more like a typo to me). In addition, I think it is more important to get the idea right. You can always double check the formula against any math reference book. Overall, I feel it is an excellent reference book for anyone with a serious interest in structured derivatives.

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.

Although this book has the usual first edition imperfections, it stands out as the best book ever written so far on options and exotic derivatives. It is comprehensive and bears superbly the comparison with the other reference in the field, namely Hull.

good functional book. keeps things simple

This book does a very nice job of both explaining how exotic options work and one's motivation for using complex derivatives. Good graphs, appropriate use of equations, and plenty of actual market-based examples.

Nelken is a clear explainer of how exotic options work. One of the key features of his work is to provoke thought about useful approaches to evaluating the products. There are no pat answers when dealing with exotics, but Nelken charts a fine road map.

This is definitely a very useful book for students taking financial engineering courses or complete newcomers in the aera of structuring. The book's written in a very clear and approachable manner and the author doesn't bother you with obscur mathematics. However, being myself a structurer of derivative products, I must unfortunately say that this book didn't really improve my knowledge in the field of structuring. But since I believe that Dr. Kat's main objective was to primarily target newcomers in the area of structured products, and not any professionals working in the business, I still think that the book is a respectable achievement.

I don't know what the occupation of the reader from Seattle is (Anonymous?), but for students of finance, like myself, who are looking for an easy understanding of how the derivatives industry works and what are the more common products traded on it, beginning with the less complex like calls, puts, followed by more complex derivatives structures and how to hedge the exposure of each of those products with out the use of complex maths, the Structured Equity Derivatives is a well written book that has help me to understand much better the world of the derivatives industry. Actually it has help me much more than other books talking about the same subject but in a different way.

I had to read this book as a requirement for a postgraduate level finance course which I took this year. I found it extremely insightful and easy to understand.

I believe (keeping fingers crossed!) that there are a lot of highly technical books out there for those with several years of experience in structured derivatives and the so called rocket scientists. But what about those who don't fall under this category? Where should those new to this field ( structured derivatives) or students who want to grasp a better understanding of derivatives after reading books such a Hull's , start with? This is exactly where Dr. Kat's book comes to picture, with a claim to offer an through understanding of structured derivatives, nothing more or less.

Reading criticism such as the one from "reader from Seattle" (below) is surprising to me, specially when he says: "I bought this book with high hopes, but I found little knowledge in it that I couldn't get from my own colleagues. And now, where is the value of reading a long book if all your colleagues know it from the word go?" Well, let me tell you something, it's for those who are not surrounded by "colleagues who know it from the word go"! And, there are a lot of us out there.

I bought it with little hopes as a text book for my course, but I found insightful knowledge of derivatives in it, which I couldn't get from a lot of my teachers let alone my colleagues!

I highly recommend it to all those who have had an introductory course on derivatives covering books such as Hull's, and want to progress further.

Suggestion: Check your colleagues first, if they know the subject, drop the book!! : )

The book places more emphasis on an intuitive grasp of the complex mathematics involved, though this must mean giving up rigour to an extent.

It is really a pleasure to read this book. While covering the most important topics it remains focused on the essentials. Whenever you have to deal with a concept in the literature about fixed income instruments you are not aware off Rebonato is always a good reference to start with, similar to Hull's or Wilmott's book.

Rebonato addresses consequently practical implementation issues (although not coevering the technical details of the implementation algorithms - read the original papers for that!) that are frequently missing in so many academic publications. This makes it to one of my favorit books on my book shelf. I am looking forward to his next book on intrest rate derivatives.

By restricting attention to interest-rate option models only, the author manages to give a thorough introduction to the subject, that goes way beyond the short chapters in standard textbooks such as Hull's or Wilmott's (I am not familiar with Miron and Swannell).

The first edition (the one that I'm familiar with) does indeed contain a number of irritating typos, many terms are first used then defined later, and the figures in particular can be greatly improved upon (I think they were produced by `Excel', which is not the best tool to produce high-quality figures for a serious technical book), however such glitches are typical of almost all books of such size and technical level.

The mathematics is not entirely trivial, but not too sophisticated either (a typical university science/engineering graduate should be able to handle it easily), and the author makes a valiant attempt to explain all relevant concepts from linear algebra to probability theory (I have to add that I didn't appreciate certain fast tricks like dropping the measure `dt' from the end of certain equations `to lighten the notation'. By doing that, one ends up with the wrong equation!)

As the author clearly indicates at the beginning, though reasonably self-contained, the book is by no means intended for a first course on option theory. However, for readers familiar with the basic facts of options and futures (at the level of Hull's book), this is a great book to read. I personally learnt an enormous lot from a first reading. I highly recommend it.

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.

1. Excellent book to recommend to people who want to learn more on exotic options, but... 2. Two many mistakes in numerical examples, formulas, and even theorems !!, actually damaging the quality of the book. Since this is the second edition, the reader was prepared to get a cleaner version. I suggest the author creates a Web site for all these errors. 3. All these errors, typos, etc... make this book out of reach for those who want to use the formulas but have no idea on how to correct them... 4. Many very usefull ideas for structured derivatives desks

I have just gradueted in Economic and Bussiness two months ago. The topic of my degree thesis was the barriers options, so I bought this Peter Zhang book. I think that it is a quite good book: easy to read, clear for its explanations but I found some mistakes in mathematical formulas. Here is the list: formula 10.25 page 212; formula 10.26b; formula 10.37 page 222; the example in page 232-233 is wrong because when the up-and-out call is valued the square symbol over the parameter v is missing; in page 236 the rebate growth rate is eta instead of gamma; formula 10.49b page 236; in formula 11.2 page 259 the correct parameter is gamma isnstead of f; in formula 11.27 page 277 UCDP is missing; formula 11.30 page 280; formula 11.34 page 281; formula 11.51 page 294. For more details about errata I found please e-mail elenaz@tin.it.

While developments in this industry move very fast, this book remains one of my favourites for covering the basics of structured derivatives.

On such a topic, it is very easy to get carried away with complex mathematics and jargon, but this author handles the task very well. Topics such as quantifying risk, measuring swap valuations and understanding complex options are explained in a way most of us will understand.

This book is not for the beginner, but is more aimed at those with an average or above average understanding of derivatives.

This book provides a healthy dose of practical wisdom for options traders so that they don't blindly follow their mathematical models into oblivion. The author (Taleb) has a PhD in finance, but also has traded in the pits, he knows both theory and practice and where they diverge.

Taleb focuses on hedging, which is a trader's main task when running a large portfolio of options. Instead of using a flood of equations, Taleb relies on charts, graphs, and tables to make his points. Most of the equations & heavy mathematics are relegated to the appendix, presumably because quants (or software) will price the instruments. He covers the behavior of the Greeks (delta, gamma, vega, theta, etc.) for vanilla options as well as behavior of exotic options, and delves into the practicalities of volatility, hedging at discontinuities, and various other topics.

The book is very popular on trading desks, and although I found it pretty good, I didn't find it to be outstanding. Also, notably, the book does NOT cover credit & interest rate derivatives at all; hopefully this will be corrected in the next edition.

So if you need a book on the practicalities of hedging a portfolio of vanilla/exotic options, then get this book. On the other hand, if you want some basic options theory, or want to focus more in pricing, or need a basic introduction, look elsewhere (perhaps to Hull's or Wilmott's books).

Yes, this book could use an editor - there are all sorts of errors everywhere. While it makes the reading pretty tough, I think this is really one of the most useful books on options around. It's a little like Campbell/Lo/MacKinlay's book on empirical finance, but with a more experienced and real-life perspective. It's a bit refreshing after all the copycat books on option pricing that still don't contribute much beyond what Hull has written. No question, top 5 in practical finance reading.

It is nearly impossible to write a book that is both mathematically rigorous and sufficiently down to earth to be accessible to the professional trader. This book is a step in the right direction. It maintains the mathematical accuracy and depth without bogging the reader down with technical derivation of formulae. At the same time, it is written by a trader whose experience in the real market compels him to constantly question the 'nice' assumptions used to derive these formulae.

Taleb is first a market practitioner who uses models and pricing formulae to enhance trading and not the other way around. If there is a discrepancy between theory and reality he doesn't blame the markets.

The book is very personal and leaves no doubt what the author's opinion is on VAR, continuous hedging and other sacred cows of modern finance. The debacle in the financial markets in 1998 and the apologetic excuses by famous traders and theoreticians indicates that there is more than a grain of truth in Taleb's skepticism.

The importance of this book is that whether one agrees or disagrees with Taleb, it forces the reader to question his basic assumptions and rethink common truths. The book is unique: it is stylish, philosophical, literary, and if one may say so of a hardcore financial book - it is very entertaining.