June 11th, 2011 
kk All About Derivatives Second Edition (All About Series)
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT DERIVATIVES
All About Derivatives, Second Edition, presents the complex subject of financial derivatives with a clarity and coherence you won’t find in other books. Using real-world examples and simple language, it lucidly illustrates what derivatives are and why they are so powerful. This second edition of All About Derivatives provides a rock-solid foundation on:
- The most common contracts available to you in today’s market
- Key concepts such as cost of carry, settlement, valuation, and payoff
- Proven methods for establishing fair value
- How leverage can work for you–and against you
- The various derivative contracts traded today, including forwards, futures, swaps, and options
- Pricing methods and mathematics for determining fair value
- Hedging strategies for managing and reducing different types of risk
INCLUDES A BRAND-NEW CHAPTER ON THE ROLE DERIVATIVES PLAYED IN THE 2008 FINANCIAL MELTDOWN
List Price: $ 22.00
Price: $ 11.65
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A Book for Those Who Need Somewhat More Careful Explanations,
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I have been trading my own account for a while and got interested in trying to make a few options trades. I went looking for a book so that I could review the basics. I found one book which basically said, “Here is how these terms are defined, and here are some formulas which employ these terms and here are some examples.” Well, that left me cold, because the author of that book made no attempt to make sure that I really understood the basic concepts. I “kind of” understood, but not really.
“All About Derivatives” by Michael Durbin is totally different. You can tell from the way he goes about explaining things that he really wants you to understand the basic concepts, and he doesn’t want you to feel “dumb” just because he brings it down to a pretty basic level from time to time. What he’s trying to do is make sure you don’t get tripped up on important concepts at the early stages and he really does bend over backwards to clarify things to a very great degree. Whereas it was pointless to try to work my way through the first book, I read “All About Derivatives” pretty much from cover to cover and I think there were only a few places where I still got stuck. Still, that’s a vast improvement over the other book and in fact it was only after reading Durbin’s book that I was able to make sense of the first one.
Some people try too hard to impress you with how academic their approach is. Michael Durbin doesn’t play that game. He really wants you to understand the concepts and I think that if he needed to do cartwheels to get the point across he would do it.
I wish this guy had written my calculus textbook when I took it in college; I wouldn’t have had to take it over to improve my grade.
I hope Durbin makes enough money in the derivatives game to retire and write full time. He’s quite a talent.
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|An Excellent Introduction to Derivatives,
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This is an extremely well-written introduction to derivatives. I used it as a supplement to a graduate course in Risk Management which had assigned Don Chase’s classic book. I found this book to be much more readable, with less formal notation and fewer equations to wade through (not to mention being much cheaper and easier to carry around). Despite its small size, it still manages to convey the essential characteristics of the major types of derivatives (forwards, futures, swaps, options, and credit derivatives) and how they are priced, without getting bogged down in excessive theory. It’s written in a pleasant, conversational style, with (horrors!) even a dash of humor thrown in. It contains the right amount of detail and math in the main text, with a series of appendices and nicely separated subsections for the more mathematically inclined. It’s a great introductory text, and I strongly recommend it for anyone starting out in the subject.
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|A work of excellence,
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This book provides the reader with confidence throughout the book, tackling a difficult topic. It was well written, and
things were easy to understand because he made the concepts simple. Its actually the best book I’ve read on options because it explains what is going on under the hood. Im hoping he’ll write another book on another interesting topic soon!
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