fainancial

Jean C. Gordon has written an excellent book with Love Uncover. I loved the part about the surreptition wink with Devon and Jason when they were talking to Tina. The parts where Devon really wanted to get close to her and not just because of the case. When he met little Amy and they both clicked when he carried her back pack. Children know when to trust and like adults. And when Tina's father was missing and Tina was casting stones into the water when Devon approached her to give her comfort. This was very touching. But the police thinking otherwise when the needles were found when her father was missing, not realizing about him being a possible diabetic. Isn't that just like people to jump to irrational decisions? Ms Gordon had me on the edge of my seat when the police showed up at the end to see Tina. This was a really good book and deserves a five stars!!!

This is a positive great book that everyone should read. You will fall in love with Tina and her daughter, Amy. There is Kate who is fun. You can tell by the way of her speech that she is a fun person. The part with Amy's father and a girlfriend made you feel as if you were right there in the hospital room sharing a family gathering. And Devon, I fell in love with his charm, his warm sincere caring for this family. The way that Ms Gordon gave the characters in this book true emotion made you feel as if you were a part of the family. And Crystal and Uncle Jack...who knows? Honestly this was a good book that I could not put down. It deserves a five stars!!

This book was very helpful, I liked it. It explained the different investments available to me in a very easy to understand way. I feel much better about my sinking 401k plan at work after reading!

This book really helped me understand the investments available to me and explained them in a simple, easy to understand way. I'm a lot more comfortable with my sinking 401k plan at work after reading this!

Essential reference for health care executives, especially sales managers. Every page is packed with easy to read and implement suggestions. Excellent job Mr. O'Malley!! Thank you.

The author made for an informative and comprehensive, yet easy to read book. His approach provided the reader with hands on tools, solutions and a wealth of reference resources not commonly known. O'Malley skipped the case studies and filled the book with timely information and facts regarding healthcare and selling in a healthcare environment. What I really liked were the countless marketing tips and mind-set messages laced throught the text. The book also contain little fluff, but great substance. Without question, anyone interested in selling will find this book will set the benchmark for selling in a healthcare environment

When you receive an inheritance, despite how it sounds, free money isn't free. With it comes sorrow within your family. Family fights can crop up, too. In addition, one has the personal struggle of figuring out how to cope with grief on the one hand and new money on the other. This book helped me see that I wasn't as rich as I thought I was and that I had better guard my inheritance for my retirement.

I went to a bookstore to ask them to look for it in the computer- the first book they came up with was Managing your parents. People on line laughed. My reply "I don't need to know how to manage my parents - they're dead. I now need the inheritance guide." Well they didn't have it- so I read my sister's copy. Great and informative on what to do with it-no matter how small the inheritance is and believe me I am a poor heir but I will definitely use the information to make it grow- No immediate facelifts for me yet. I want a copy to refer to for my financial goals

An excellent book that covers all the financial bases for personal finances. Great for anyone, from college to retired, single or married. This single book cuts through all the confusion and gives clear, to the point advice on selecting stocks, building IRAs, taxes, insurance, health care, etc.

My only concern is that the book was written in 1996 and some of the information could be dated. Still, it is good solid fundemental advice. Anyone following the guidelines and sticks to them will achieve the financial independence they are looking for.

Absolute route to money power.

I like the way this book is designed to go straight to your immediate interests.

Shows you how to eliminate fifty percent of your business and personal worries.

This is definitely a prescription for curing emotional upsets as in financial worries.!

This book is dedicated to all of you guys out there who think they do not need it.!

"Merchants of Misery" is a damning indictment of unregulated, free-market capitalism and provides a reader with more than enough material to refute the claim that capitalism is synonymous with fredoom, as espoused by Milton Friedman disciples etcetera.

A lucid, searing and compelling analysis of America's poverty industry, "Merchants of Misery" starts off by illustrating how discriminatory banking practices disallow poor and minority coneumers to partake of their services. By refusing banking services (loans) in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, mainstream banks are creating a vacuum that is being filled by cheque-cashers, high-rate mortgage companies and other financial enterprises eager to fleece the poor.

"Merchants of Misery" provides glimpse after glimpse into the lives of real poverty-stricken people and their efforts to fight back. Fighting back by way of consumer rights attorneys, neighbourhood activists and a coalition of average citizens attacking the purveyors of this despicable industry with lawsuits, protests and alternative financial services. A powerful book.

How much misery can one person stand in their lifetime? is it not enough to be poor in America? Must one suffer injurious harm and injury at the hands of rent-to-own centers,check-cashing stores, and pay-day lending operations? Michael Hudson catalogs not just the personal misery of those merely seeking a piece of the American dream, he skillfully exposes the corporations behind the merhcants of misery. The names of these corporate perpetrators are all-too-familiar to us--Ford, Chrysler, and NationsBank. Hudson ironically points out that these same corporations, who are unwilling to provide branch operations in the inner city, are perfectly willing to provide finance subsidiaries, check-cashing operations, rent-to-own centers, and a myriad of loan sharking operations that would make the mafia proud. Hudson points out that few states, particularly southern states, have usury laws which prevent these predators from charging anywhere from 20-1,000% for their merchandise. In one case, a TV set, which could have been purchased for $300-400 went for over $1,200 after all the payments were made to a rent-to-own center. Hudson has written an important, must-be-read book detailing yet another war on the poor--the war penalizing those who merely want a piece of the American dream--and get a piece of the American nightmare.

The application of highly sophisticated mathematical techniques to finance is now commonplace and is considered also of great practical importance. Mathematical modeling in finance is now very entrenched in investment houses and trading firms and this will only increase in years to come. This book is an excellent overview of mathematical finance and is written for mathematicians who have no background in finance. The book could be read easily by anyone with background in stochastic processes at the level of the author's earlier book "Brownian Motion and Stochastic Calculus". Since it is written for mathematicians, it follows a "definition-theorem-proof" format. However the authors do interject a lot of explanation into the dialog, especially that concerning finance.

Chapter 1 is an overview of a Brownian motion model of financial markets. Financial assets are considered to have prices evolving continuously in time and driven by Brownian motion. They do however g!ive references for models that assume discontinuous asset prices. The authors define a financial market rigorously in terms of (progressively) measurable processes for the risk-free rate, mean rate of return, dividend rate, and volatility. The after a discussion of portfolio, gains, income, and wealth processes, the authors define a notion of a viable market, namely one where there are no arbitrage opportunities. They then define standard and complete financial model and characterize their properties in terms of martingales.

Chapter 2 is a treatment of options pricing theory, with the assumption of a complete standard, financial market. These contingent claims are given a brief historical introduction at the beginning of the chapter. European contigent claims are treated first, followed by a discussion of forward and futures contracts. The Black-Scholes option pricing formula is then derived. American contingent claims are then discussed and defined as an income proc!ess and a settlement process. With the assumption that the discount payoff process is bounded from below and continuous, the value of the American contingent claim is given in terms of the Snell envelope of the payoff process. The discussion illustrates the difficulties in valuing American claims, based as they are on an arbitrary exercise time.

Chapter 3 is a study of a "small" single investor who begins with an initial endowment and invests in a standard complete market. The discussion reads more like one from a book on utility theory and portfolio analysis. Indeed, the Legendre transform of the utility function appears when attempting to mazimize utility from consumption plus expected utility from terminal wealth. The (nonlinear) Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation appears in thes considerations as expected.

In chapter 4, the equilibrium problem is considered. In such a model, security prices are determined by the law of supply and demand. There are a finite !number of agents with utility functions and there are endowment processes. The endowments can be traded via a financial market of stocks and money market funds. The goal of the chapter is to find the equilibrium condition where endowments are consumed and the net supply of securities is zero. The authors give a rigorous proof of the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium. In addition, they give interesting examples of equilibrium markets that can be computed explicitly.

The next chapter is much more involved and studies how to do arbitrage pricing in incomplete markets. Portfolio constraints force the market to be incomplete, and the authors show how buyers and sellers in such a market can calculate the hedging price of a claim in terms of "dual" processes in a family of auxiliary markets. Since this is a constrained optimization problem, one would naturally think Lagrange multipliers would appear, and this is indeed the case, with the dual processes being the analog!ue of Lagrange multipliers. The usual unconstrained problem then is the result of this. Their approach here is extended in the last chapter of the book where the problem of optimal consumption and investment in a constrained financial market is considered. This is specialized to a deterministic case and the dual to the constrained problem satisfies a linear Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation. This duality between the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian points of view is not surprising to the astute reader (and particularly the physicist reader).

The book is challenging. But if you want to do real good work in finance. You must read it.

Truly, this book is one of the best financial books I have ever read because it is easy to read, makes sense, and very entertaining while you learn millionaire habits.

The authors experiences of stripping her way through a college degree in a bad economy to making millions in a respected profession is an inspiration to anyone who doesn't like their job.

This is a great reading adventure!

Melody Scoggins,
San Jose, California

This is a fun book that takes as long to read as going to a movie! The authors' writing style is easy to follow, sound advice and gives you an unconventional rags to riches story that will have your eyes pop out! Enjoy!

This book is extremely hard to find, even through used-books web sites. I suggest calling the publisher (ASAE) directly at (202) 626-2723.

As a partner with a CPA firm in Annapolis, MD, our firm has several not-for-profit clients. One of their most serious deficiences is the lack of formal, board-approved accounting and financial policies and procedures.

Our experience has been that formal policies, in addition to eliminating misunderstandings between the CEO, the CFO and the board is that they are invaluable in the event of an IRS audit.

When advising our clients of the importance of these policies, we found that compiling policies from scratch was a very time-consuming process.

We found the answer - McMillan's "Model Accounting & Financial Policies and Procedures Handbook". This book addresses every conceivable policy from Access to Records by Members to the Year-End Manual and everything in between! Additionally, the CD Rom that is included with the book results in completing an otherwise onerous task with a minimum of effort.

We use it at our firm and we highly recommend it to our clients!

Feel free to call me with any questions:

Andrew Lombardo, CPA Sturn, Wagner, Sacclaris & Lombardo, CPAs 1 Annapolis St., 2nd floor Annapolis, MD 21401 (410) 263-4120

This is (still) an excellent book, ahead of its time when published in 1986. One of the issues he dealt with was the possible modifications to option pricing models (black-scholes type) that could be made to account for trending markets. This was before the crash of '87 and the subsequent wide-spread adoption of skewed volatility smiles and risk-reversals into option pricing.

This book is probably out of print permanently, but the author is working on a new book, the provisional title of which is "Asset Price Dynamics and Prediction" Target Date of March 2004. The chapters are loosely based on subjects covered in Modelling Financial Time series.

Chapter headings for Modelling Financial Time series:

1. Introduction
2. Features of financial returns
3. Modelling price volatility
4. Forecasting standard deviations
5. The accuracy of autocorrelation estimates
6. Testing the random walk hypothesis
7. Forecasting trends in prices
8. Evidence against the efficiency of futures markets
9. Valuing options
10. Concluding remarks
Appendix : a computer program for modelling financial time series

The first edition was published in 1986. It is EXCELLENT. Taylor rigorously studies the use of nonlinear time-series (Box-Jenkins) methods to trade a variety of financial markets, including individual stocks, stock indices, currencies, metals, and agricultural commodities, finding that there is a small trend component in most markets that can be profitably traded. Taylor performed testing of time series back in the early 1980s, when computer power and financial data was much scarcer and more expensive. I am excited to see what he has come up with, now that computers and data are a zillion times cheaper.