Option

In his book, Mr. Ira Kawaller covers an amazing range of topics from risk managemant to stock options. I have never read a book so incredibly exciting in all of my life. Mr. Kawaller knows how to display the facts, provide informative facts, and decorate it all with a wit and charm that thrives in his book. "Financial Futures and Options" is THE book for risk management lovers everywhere. This book inspired me to change my career choices. After reading "Futures" (in one sitting!) I knew that prostitution and drug dealing was just not for me. I am now an economist making over $600,000 a year and loving it. Thank you, Mr. Kawaller. You turned my life around. (From what everyone is saying, I believe Mr. Kawaller now runs his own business called Kawaller & Company in Brooklyn, NY. If you ever need help financially, Mr. Kawaller will personally see to it that you get back on track. After all, risk can be managed if it is faced in a disciplined way. Ignore it and you face disaster. E-mail Kawaller and Company at kawaller@idt.net and good luck!)

This book explains how to assign a value to options in understandable terms. Some knowledge of calculus is helpful but not necessary to grasp the concepts. Equations are given for those interested.

A number of example portfolios consisting of calls and/or puts are given. Each portfolio is described in terms of aggressive or conservative, sensitivity to volatility, and performance relative to movements in the underlying stock. Graphs show the current and expiration date values of the portfolio versus the price of the underlying stock.

Baxter's book, "Financial Calculus: An Introduction to Derivative Pricing", concentrates on the math. This book puts its emphasis on trading strategies.

This is an unblievable book about flexible work options. It has helped my company very much. I would recomend this book to everyone!

The main thrust of this book is the development of new and powerful symmetry relationships in the values of options in foreign exchange markets. What makes these relationships really interesting -- and useful -- is that the authors show that they are valid in all markets. For example, no assumptions are needed on the existence of probability distributions. The final symmetries are easily understood and introduced using language from physics. This stuff should be in all books on mathematical finance. Traders, financial professionals, students and academics will find this book useful.

As a counselor in a Community College, I found this book to be an excellent example of ways in which our students could use their degrees. Many of the students at a two year college are not aware of what they could use their degrees for and this book helps to make them aware of their options.

Those with chronic health conditions or disabilities are often the last to qualify for good health insurance. Health Insurance Resource Manual: Options For People With A Chronic Disease Or Disability contains details about options for individuals who are uninsured, underinsured, or who have questions about Social Security, Medicare and other options. The first section answers questions and reviews health insurance plans; the second offers the directories and resources to aid in further research.

Published in January 2001 this book contains
(p. 176) a prediction about the course of the
NASDAQ that up to now (i.e. 27 October 2002) is
fairly well matched by the actual fall of the
NASDAQ Composite Index over the period 2000-2002.
Strangely enough, that prediction is not based
on a sophisticated stochastic model, but rather
on the observation of previous stock price
peaks such as the one in Paris in 1882, the crash
in Paris in early 1929, the crash in New York in late
1929 and several others.
You may think that such an approach based on the analysis
of recurrent events after all is not different from
what chartists are doing. There is however a big difference.
Here the approach works
because it compares events which
are brought about by similar phenomena.
An example may
help to better understand that point. Obviously, it
would be an hopeless task to base a forecast of tomorrow's
weather on the weather observed on previous days. However,
it does make sense in August
to forecast the average temperature
in New York City six months later for this prediction
is based on
a well-defined phenomenon, namely the rotation of the
Earth around the Sun. Similarly, the author shows that
behind stock price peaks there are
indeed specific recurrent phenomena; note that these
phenomena are not confined to the sole financial sphere
but are deeply rooted in the society as a whole.
The book is not only about stock markets but considers
all kinds of speculative fever whether affecting stocks,
real estate, postage stamps, collector books, sugar, silver
or diamonds. The section about real estate markets
is of particular interest at the present moment. It shows
that real estate price peaks ressemble stock price
peaks in the sense that they are almost symmetrical with
respect to the maximum, but they are smoother and
the shift from the up- to the down-going
phase is gradual instead
of being sudden and abrupt as was the case for the NASDAQ.
At the end of the book the author provides several useful
data sets such as real estate prices in Britain and
Paris, price of individual NYSE stocks during the crash of
1929 and so on.
There is an insightful story on almost every page of this
book. Highly recommended.

In Indian capital market, a historic change is going to take place on July 2, 2001. Indian capital market has a system of carrying forward the trades done on the stock market till the party completes the delivery of cash or certificates as the case may be or squares off the transaction with a buy or sell as appropriate. During the carry forward period, the margin may or may not be paid by the investor, but he has to pay carryforward charges from settlemet period to settlement period. This practice is being stopped from July 2, 2001 and India will have a derivative market in financial securities in which only the players can take positions by paying margins.

Hence, there is a lot of interest in the country to read books on futures and options trading. People are moving from library to library to read books on derivatives. It is in this context that I came across this book.

This book is edited one. Right at the beginning of the book, the editor focusses the readers on the three essential elements of future trading: discipline, well designed trading system, and adequate capitalization. A chapter on discipline by Jake Bernstein stresses the importance of continuous effort to track the market data and act upon it. Kenneth Upshaw's chapter on conserving capital is a very useful chapter. In a recent seminar, a number of experienced brokers commented that clients in general do not like stop loss actions. That means many traders in the markets are doing a basic mistake. The call of the editor to traders to review the basics of trading is very appropriate. Eighteen chapters are devoted to discuss various technical approaches that were used by master traders successfully.

The last chapter summarizes all the chapters in the book and provides the common threads of the master strategies.

This book is recommended for study by every aspiring futures trader. Only difficulty could be that you have to find it in a library.

I have to say that The Hitchhiker¹s Guide is fascinating. From the 'stage set up' of a very intellectual introduction, to the differing but complementary approaches of fundamental and technical analysis, random theory of markets, to discussions of the great mathematicians, philosopher's and thinker's, to the universality of Boole's laws of thought, I have found all of this very stimulating and informative. I believe this book will be seminal as the resource for clear thinking about the business of trading for years to come. There is much to be gained from reading and re-reading these various chapters. I say this because much of what¹s captured in words, sprinkling Boole's logic throughout, about the mind-set of a trader, his emotions, the fear of loss, having a trading plan with undying faith, all of this I have felt. What I hadn't realized is the way floor trader's and the losers (85% of traders) actually move markets. That was an 'aha' for me.

A friend sent me a copy of this book from the USA. It really made me think about HRT.
The author has set it out so clearly,with personal examples and lots of bite-sized information. I really liked this, as so many books have too much info in long paragraphs. She asks the reader to consider if she's at risk of certain conditions e.g osteoporosis,whereas lots of books and magazines seem to say all of us women are going to become osteoporotic. As well, there's valuable info about HRT and diabetes, bowel cancer,breast cancer and Alzheimer's disease.(I was amazed to read the research about the latter)
The alternatives part was very revealing, I had no idea menopausal symptoms could be helped by herbal remedies and acupuncture.
It's informative, practical, and accessible. It really helped me make a decision about whether or not to try HRT.
Must mention the layout and photos - they are fabulous!