Foreign-currency Books

The reviewers are right, the book is dated.... BUT ONLY THE TECHNOLOGY THAT KRIEGER USED. The art of trading, the meat and bones of it, will NEVER BE DATED. That is why with basically just a telephone I bet Krieger could trade rings around all of us. So stop looking at the date of publication and look at the information published in this book.
This guy made a lot of money because he kept long hours and worked hard, and this book can help us novice traders understand that.

About the time of the Gulf War, International Markets had been hoping the U.S financial house would put their house in order. International Markets wanted more investing, savings and growth; instead, U.S markets became heavy in consumer debt. Interest, taxes, and inflation were at high levels. Foreign investment began seized up large chunks of real estate hoping for inflation too drive up price and increase their U.S equities. The 80s housing boom would be curtailed by rising interest rates but maintain a stead climb for the next 25 years. Real Estate would seem invincible until maximum debt levels could not be exceeded.

Corporate Investment enticed foreign investors to buy U.S companies based on location value and settling for lower levels of production. However, the corporation investors would not be expected to maintain this pattern. Investor would buy U.S companies and transfer labor forces overseas taking advantage of lower labor costs and high profit margins.

Deflation. What would happen, if the housing prices deflate? Cheap money would be repaid by expensive money and for this reason, it may be better to cut loses, and move the money into a foreign currency. Perhaps, the Germany currency would be the refuge to preserve value. Investors will be looking for currencies in countries where economic growth is high, inflation low, and real interest rates are high. Investors always have a safe habor to retreat too. Once the Foreign exchange starts moving in a particular way, it is unlikely to reverse, just like big ships turn slowly. The shifting of money between countries is linked to economic performance.

In 1984, the dollar reached new highs, many consider it overvalued, some were watching for a sell-off. Reagan stated, he would not intervene. The decline of the dollar was agreed upon in "The Plaza agreement", as follows, "further orderly appreciation of the main non-dollar currencies against the dollar is desireable." Between 1985-87 the dollar fell 50% meaning the buying power of the U.S citizen was cut in half.

Capital flows. There is only one hugh pot of international money. Capital flows shift assets from one country to another and these shifts affect the currency value or the exchange rate. Foreign exchange is needed for liquidity. Individual trader make and lose money from Foreign exchange transactions, however, corporations use the foreign exchange for liquidity. Corporations may be required to make purchases in dollars, so they exchange local currency for dollars.

Hedging allows the company to lock a certain exchange rate in the future for a fix amount of money. Banks offer these credit rate forwards to clients. Banks actively try to bet they can beat the averages extended for the credit forward rate. Banks do this by buying and selling currencies on the foreign exchange and profiting off a marginal spread.

In 1991, the U.S recession was ending, Europe economy was slowing down, the dollar was sharply rising, relative interest rates were thought to be shifting to the West, dollar dominated assets were becoming attractive, and capital began pouring in. U.S commodities prices, bonds, and securities were directly affected by foreign investment. This massive international pool of money flowed from one investment vehicle to another. Large blocks of commerical and private real estate where wholly or partially owned by the British, Dutch, Canadian, and Japanese countries. U.S manufacturing depending heavily on investment from overseas.

U.S imports are paid in dollars. When the foreign exchange rate favors imports (when their is a strong domestic currency), lower import costs will soon be pass along to the consumer, in terms of cheaper products. For example, an American importer buying Japanese goods must trade dollars for yen in order to pay for those goods. Likewise, a German buying American goods must sell deutsche marks and buy dollars in order to pay his invoice with U.S currency. When the exchange rate goes against a company, it must lower costs, lower its profit margin, and seek new avenues to export goods.

The foreign exchange market is a free market in the purest sense. It is not answerable to a higher authority; it is composed of 200,000 active traders; it has millions of global investors; it has no restrictions on this market; it has no international authority acting as a governing authority; it is consider one of the most stablizing factos in the world monetary system.

I tend to overlook the age of books before purchasing them, and this is yet another one of those follies. Aside from that, this book is an interesting read, though more personalized and biographical. I would pick this book up if you want to maybe gleam some personal concepts and perceptions from an insider, but don't think it's going to help your trading or undestanding too much. There are much better books for that.

Krieger, I'm going to guess, didn't really know for sure what kind of book he wanted to write so he kind of included a bit of everything, but gave us not enough of anything.

It would have been great if the book had been written in the same style that Jim Cramer's book revealing how he ran his hedge fund was written, lot's of action and description. Krieger includes some of this, like how he'd spend 18 to 20 hours a day in front of a computer and wonder about his life. But he just didn't get in depth enough.

He covers a lot of history, but again, it was not enough if history was what you were looking for. In my case, it was a bit much, I really didn't need to hear so much about the specific names and dates, I wanted more of the individual trading side of his story, what he did and why. How it worked or didn't.

Of course, this book is totally out of date. For that reason, it is actually even more interesting in a way, as the author has no idea how FX trading will advance.

The book itself offers no specific strategies or advice on investing in the FX market, however, I guess that would make sense as when it was written, only pro's or people with a lot of cash could enter this market.

If Krieger were to decide to write a modern work, covering the topic of trading "inside the trillion-dollar world of currency trading" as the cover states, it would be something I'd love to read. I can't recommend this work currently, without the caveat that the reader realize it's limited value as far as trading in today's market. The history, however, is interesting as is the limited view the author gives us as to his trading. Whether the price of the book is worth paying, I'd recommend it only to the reader that is sure of what they are getting.

This is a great book. Mr.Krieger gives you the history of how foreign currency trading came about. He also provides you insight into how curreny trading work and more importantly how it fails.

He doesn't give specific strategies on how to trade currencies, but he does introduce vocabulary and resources to help you get started. In that respect the book is out of date. There is no discussion on the internet and how that has changed the face of currency trading forever.

This is a good book, a foreign exchange classic that wouldn't hurt any currency trader if he kept a copy on his shelf.

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.

Contents Include:

* Currency Derivatives: A Guide for Practitioners (G. Hopper)
* Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Currency Futures..(H. Taylor)
* Central Banks and the Currency Markets (A. Hodge)
* Speculative Trading and Hedge Funds (M. Rafferty)
* Fundamental Analysis (Earl Johnson)
* Technical Analysis (T. Basso)
* Option Strategies (Neil Record)

* Maximizing Diversification in International Investing: New Opportunities (V. Parker)
* Immunization Strategy for Multinational Fixed-Income Investments (Hauser, Levy, Yaari)
* Currency-Hedging Foreign Investments: Why Bonds and Equities are Different (Lee Thomas III)
* Measuring the Performance of Currency Managers (B. Strange)

* The relationship of Management To Effective Risk Control (Alex Koh)
* Risk Measurement (Linsmeier & N. Pearson)
* The Uses of Analytics (E. Zask)
* Passive versus Active Management (L. McNew)
* Foreign-Exchange Risk Management at Tenneco (James West, Jr.)
* Regulatory Issues: Accounting and Financial Reporting for Instruments Subject to Global Currency Risk (Herz, Linsmeier, Bhave)

This book contains some useful stuff for those hoping to understand exchange rate risk management. Unfortunately, being a collection of articles by different authors, it also contains a lot of stuff that is less useful and lacks coherence. A good book for those involved in risk management to delve into on occasion. Beginners need to be careful as it seems to contain some questionable arguments.

A very readable (and detailed if you read those parts) introduction to the subject of international finance.

The standard MBA text book, and one of a handful of finance books recently deemed significant enough to be translated into Chinese.

Also, how can you resist a book with sections on topics such as 'Banking Telecommunications and the Information Superspyway' as well as dry and very detailed math on derivatives trading models.

Other reviews from the great and good:

"This is the best text I have seen in international finance. Good work." Stephen P. Magee, Department of Finance, University of Texas.

"Grabbe had taught several 'Market Wizards' to trade currencies--and this is the book they recommend for understanding currency fundamentals." Dr. Alexander Elder, Director, Financial Trading Seminars.

"This is an original and insightful presentation of material that is often ignored or badly treated in other books." Richard J. Herring, Director, Wharton Program in International Banking and Finance.

"An exceptionally well-written book with detailed coverage of the financial markets in the international scene." Rahul Bishnoi, Department of Finance, University of Wisconsin.

". . . too much detail on markets." [Name Omitted], Tufts University.

"Excellent book . . . teaches students about actual markets and financial instruments..." J. A. Rosensweig, Yale University.

". . . an excellent and lucid analysis of the functioning of the international money market." C. Lawrence, Columbia University.

"Last year I found your book in the Beijing Library (the National Library of China) and had it xeroxed. . . Now I am cooperating with one of my friends to translate it into Chinese . . . China is trying very hard to apply the market mechanism to her economy." Zhang Bin, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China.

"By far the best book available. Well-written, up-to-date & accessible . . ." Asim Erdilek, Case Western University.

"This is an excellent, challenging, well-written book." E. B. Fredrikson, School of Management, Syracuse University.

hello sir/madam
h r u.i hope u will be fine and everything is ok there.i want a brief about international financial market because i will be going to present this in front of a group.so plz send me free details about this topic.
i hope my request should be accepted and sould be replied very soon.
bye

This book has a well written chapter on the economics of foreign exchange. This books' chapters on e-foreign exchange and innovations in e-fx are rather useless for the beginner and also outdated.

The chapters on technical analysis and the individual trainer are short and to the point. It's good information but not enough 'meat' to assist the individual to make better trades. More or the same information can be found in other books that also explain in more details.

There are several chapters that are mainly written for large institutional traders which I didnt find very useful other than getting a 'birds-eye' view from their position.

In my opinion, this book is more for intermediate traders but I wouldn't recommend it to beginners.

After reading almost 50 books on the Forex Market and trading the markets live for a few years, I decided that Ms. Taylor's Mastering Foreign Exchange and Currency Options: A Practical Guide to the New Marketplace is the one Forex Book I would take with me if forced to select one. Why? Because it is the only book to somehow comprehensively cover topics as diverse as Currenex, the application of Technical Analysis to FX, Buy Side vs. Sell Side FX Dealer dynamics, Corporate Treasury Hedging, and of course a fairly essential history of both the economics of foreign exchange and the fundamentals relevant to trading it. The book is only 380 pages and most certainly does meet the needs of entry level traders. Intermediate traders or professionals will certainly find topics covered which prompt an occasional: " I didn't know that !". Again, Ms. Taylor has given us the essentials of both the theoretical dimensions of Foreign Exchange pricing both Spot, Futures, and Options AND the nitty, gritty incidentals of how the technology works to make the market happen. What most books on Forex fail to do - this book does achieve. Few Forex primers squarely place Spot Forex into the Inter-Bank context where it belongs. Few books adequately integrate information about Corporate Treasury concerns with the nature of Central Bank Intervention. Trading Forex on the Retail level without understanding CLS or the Flow Information available through Currenex is like Racing Nascar without knowing how to change a tire. Ms. Taylor's book achieves this through the gift of being able to simplify, coordinate, and render the essential of a topic without loss of rigor or information. Usually books achieving this are a dense read, but this book is not - and that is the work of a great teacher.

As someone who is not an economist, I am in no position to rate Tan's arguments vis-a-vis the positions of other economists. However, as an introduction to the complexities of the 1998 meltdown in Asian economies, this book is first-rate. It is very well organized.

Dealing with the crisis chronologically, and country-by-country, Tan is able to illustrate patterns that span the whole event, and unique events within each country. He treats the responses of each country, and does not shirk from providing a sober and often scathing assessment of the attitudes and policy responses of individual countries. His political analyses are just as useful, since the implications of the event have so much to do with the political makeup of individual countries, and their political and financial institutions.

Market data is used extensively to support his claim. There is a tremendous and often overwhelming plethora of data. However, if one is just looking for an identification of major patterns and analyses, Tan illustrates this very clearly within his chapters.

This book is a great resource for someone who wants access to source data that is relevant to the Asian Meltdown, as well as just a broad introduction to the phenomena that helps a reader trying to understand such a significant event (or series of events).

Anniversaries typically spark the reconsideration of historic events in all manner of popular ways, from reenactments to ceremonies to historical publications. The fortieth anniversary of the Berlin Airlift in 1988 was no exception. Ann and John Tusa's "The Berlin Airlift" was one of many publications about the episode originally appearing as a result of that anniversary. It asserts that the Berlin Blockade represented a titanic struggle between two blocks of nations with divergent ideologies that nearly plunged the world into another major war. More important, however, it concentrates on the intensely human experience of the crisis, describing the problems and successes of the personalities involved. Throughout, in words and pictures, it creates vivid images of the crisis for a largely popular audience.

The blockade of Berlin marked the first direct confrontation between the West and the Soviet Union in the post-World War II era. The United States, France, and the United Kingdom responded to the Soviet siege with an ingenious means of maintaining the allied presence in a city cut-off from the rest of Western Europe without provoking combat. American and British fliers operated a complex shuttle service between western Germany and Berlin for some fifteen months between June 1948 and September 1949, hauling more than 2.3 million tons of supplies to the better than two million inhabitants of Berlin. This sustenance allowed the western allies to maintain their presence and influence in the city, if only by their fingernails, while diplomats worked on a settlement.

Ann and John Tusas' book presents the events of the Berlin blockade and airlift as an epic struggle between nations. Written from a decidedly British viewpoint--John Tusa is a journalist with the BBC-"The Berlin Airlift" contains a rousing story of individual heroism and high drama. It reads like a classic western, with good guys (the western allies) and bad guys (the Soviets and communist Germans), and anecdotes about how these two forces clashed. Like any good western, the ending was predictable as the Americans and their allies ultimately defeated the Soviets.

"The Berlin Airlift" will be of more interest to non-specialist readers than to students of Berlin Airlift historiography, although those knowledgeable about many aspects of the crisis will still benefit from the Tusas' descriptions of the British contributions to the airlift. The authors thoroughly researched British records and analyzed that aspect of the story, a particular area that has been slighted in previous studies of the crisis, and they present their findings better and with more verve than any earlier work. The position of the British government in the crisis; the development, organization, and, operation of the British task force flying airlift missions; and the British role in negotiating the lifting of the blockade are well documented in "The Berlin Airlift."

There are, however, several flaws which make "The Berlin Airlift" less useful than I would have liked. First, the authors take more than 150 out of a total of 379 pages of text to get to the actual blockade of Berlin. While this prefatory material deals with the Berlin question and general relations between the two power blocks that confronted each other at Berlin in 1948-1949, it seems excessive when measured against the size of the whole book. I would have anticipated a more expeditious handling of earlier foreign relations and a greater emphasis on the airlift itself. Second, no clear picture of the American side of the airlift can be gained from reading the Tusas' book. The organization of the 1st Berlin Airlift Task Force, the agent managing the American effort, receives short shrift; as does the unique operational approach developed to order airlift flow. Almost nothing about Major General William H. Tunner, the American commander who more than anyone understood the possibilities and especially the limitations of airlift and organized the operation for the success it achieved during the winter of 1948-1949, is included in "The Berlin Airlift." Brigadier General Joseph Smith, who initially commanded the Airlift Task Force and oversaw the early success of the operation, is not even mentioned. The Tusas offer no discussion of any sophistication about the pattern of operations, the nature of logistics and maintenance, command and control, force structure, and C-54 acquisition from outside of Europe to augment the airlift fleet. From an operational perspective, this books discussion of the American airlift effort is at best superficial. Indeed, the book should have been retitled to indicate that it dealt largely with the British aspects of the airlift.

Finally, the scholarly apparatus of this book, while present, proves next to useless. A mere five pages of bibliography, omitting some of the most interesting and useful works on the subject, were used as the basic references for the book. Even worse, the chapter notes are especially confusing because they have no page numbers for any published sources. Since the majority of the references are for published works this shortcoming is particularly troublesome. No one will be able to reconstruct the thought processes of the authors as they review the text, and I must ask, was that the intent in omitting them? To the credit of the Tusas, however, they have mined the Public Records Office in the United Kingdom and have, as their chapter notes demonstrate, offered several new insights relative to British participation in the airlift based upon these records.

"The Berlin Airlift" certainly has its strengths and weaknesses. It will not replace W. Phillips Davison's "The Berlin Blockade: A Study in Cold War Politics" (1958) and especially Avi Shlaim's "The United States and the Berlin Blockade, 1948-1949" (1983), both outstanding analyses of this foreign policy crisis. But this work does package the basic story in a readable format that will be useful to a general audience. Especially interesting, "The Berlin Airlift" demonstrates how military airlift can assist foreign policy execution. The unique capabilities of air transport in a non-combat environment were a fundamentally important realization of the experience. Since then military airlift, proven a viable option in the Berlin crisis, has been used with increasing frequency.

From the publisher: "Foreign Exchange and Money Market" is a comprehensive handbook for those seeking insight into the dynamic world of international currency dealing. It provides a structured illustration of the complexities of foreign exchange, money market and the interplay of market forces through real world examples and case studies.

In addition to the fundamentals and history of these markets and rounding off this extensive manual, it delves into the conventions and practicalities of sales and trading observed in the manual today.

Is a very good introduction for a Foreign Exchange Market. Specially in futures markets

The author's expertise in the subject matter becomes apparent when you read his lucid explanations of a subject matter that can be quite dry. He successfully intertwines historical events and human stories with the technical discussions of each section to keep the reader engaged and interested. Despite the breadth of the book it is clear that the author has spent considerable time researching the individual sections and has presented the material in a methodical and organized fashion. Thus it clearly serves as a useful professional guide and should be on every money manager's shelf. I especially enjoyed reading the beginning chapters which focus on the historical background and the arrangement of the global currency markets. The author has many clear examples to illustrate his points and thus the book will also appeal to the novice who wants to learn the fundamentals of the currency markets.