Richard Grasso's fall from power at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) made headlines, but these only hinted at a fuller story. With this fast-paced biography, veteran reporter Gasparino recounts Grasso's life, growing up as a poor Italian-American and taking a back-office job at the NYSE when he failed to pass the eye exam to become a New York cop. We follow his rise, the 1987 crash, the 9/11 attacks and the scandal that ultimately did him in. The book is a fascinating look at the inner workings of the NYSE as it transitioned into the 21st century ...

Anyone who works in the mutual fund industry will want to read this compelling biography of Paul Cabot, a Boston Brahmin and cofounder of one of the first mutual funds. It is a window on the origins of mutual funds, a topic inadequately treated by other historians. Read about early stock pickers when markets were unregulated and sufficiently inefficient that outperforming was as easy as visiting a few corporations and asking questions. Then there was the 1929 crash and Depression-era regulation. Cabot's life provides a front row seat. Highly recommended! ...

It is often assumed that the modern corporation with dispersed shareholders emerged to facilitate the industrial revolution. Hardly true! Railroads were huge, but they were funded with bonds. Their stock was mostly held by insiders. Industrial corporations emerged abruptly in a merger wave between 1897 and 1903. Financiers combined regional firms into "trusts" and amassing fortunes by issuing watered stock. We are still living with consequences. This fascinating history documents the legal and financial innovations that made it possible ...

This is a wonderful, easy-to-read introduction to SOX. It is not as deep as some of the other books coming out, but it offers substantial insights. Two particular strengths are its description of the COSO framework, which has been endorsed by the SEC, and its treatment of information technology issues ...

This is an introduction that starts with the basics: "What is a call?" "What is a strike price?" but soon is explaining concepts from a dealer's perspective: "What is dynamic hedging?" "When should you buy or sell volatility?" There is a huge gap between the simple pros the author uses to introduce concepts and the smattering of calculus formulas he deploys to clarify them. The unsophisticated readers he targets will find the formulas impenetrable, but perhaps unnecessary ...

This introduction to derivatives and financial engineering is a joint effort of about sixteen authors. Maybe it is an issue of too many chefs, or maybe the problem is someone's poor English, but the book is atrociously written. Not only is the English broken, but the technical level starts off as something that would appeal to a layman but by the end of the book would make a Ph.D. sweat. The authors seem to know their stuff. There is plenty of practical information for financial engineering in the equity, inflation and fixed income markets ...

This reads like a teenager idolizing favorite pop stars—how this one moves his hips; and that one has a pouty smirk ... The fascination is directed, of course, at hedge fund managers: how this one has the conviction to stick to his guns; and that one has been constructing stock portfolios since he was ten. She blathers about the one who wore faded jeans ripped at the knee to their interview. And he was wearing yellow argyle socks and brown suede loafers, in case you are interested. Balancing all this is a brief description of one hedge fund manager convicted of fraud ...

This is an introduction to quantitative finance based on a non-standard perspective called the "benchmark approach." This prices using "real world" probabilities and a "growth optimal portfolio" as numeraire. The approach has advantages over the traditional risk-neutral framework, but it is non-standard. While the book is written as an introduction, starting with basic probability theory, progressing through stochastic calculus and then developing financial concepts, the ideas presented in the second half are likely to appeal primarily to theoreticians ...

Over the last 20 years, global bank regulators have increasingly relied on minimum capital requirements to ensure the solvency of banks and address the moral hazard of deposit insurance. This book builds models based on German bank data to assess how capital requirements influence bank's risk taking and holding of economic capital. The short book is written for academics. All the right papers are cited, and models are built on models. I'm still trying to figure out what charter value is, but I suspect it is a fudge factor. Practitioners can give the book a pass ...

Written for accountants or finance practitioners with strength in accounting, this book illustrates practical situations where corporations might use derivatives and need to account for them—including FX, interest rate, equity and commodities hedges. Hedge accounting rules are emphasized. The focus is on international accounting standards, and especially IAS 139, the international equivalent of GAAP FAS 133. Primarily the book educates and outlines reasonable interpretations where rules are ambiguous ...

Logit models, Halton numbers, maximum likelihood, the Berkowitz test, Brier Scores ... these are just a handful of the practical tools you will learn as you implement the models in this book. Using Excel and VBA, it walks readers through a number of credit-related applications, including credit scoring, structural models, portfolio default models and pricing models. Some familiarity with credit modeling, financial math and VBA are assumed. This book is perfect for quantitative professionals with a few years experience who want to broaden their modeling skills ...

These are the edited proceedings of a conference about NASDAQ held at Baruch College in 2005. Discussions are high-level interactions between experts. Familiarity with industry developments is assumed, so this is not a book for beginners. The liberal use of jargon can be unforgiving. Pros may find the opinions worth reflecting on, but a lot has changed in the past two years. The book is already dated ...

Are risk-adjusted performance metrics (RAPMs) developed for the capital markets, but are they relevant for bank loan portfolios? They are used in that context despite the characteristics of commercial banks that set them apart from trading portfolios—issues such as bank shareholders' limited liability, costs of bankruptcy, and the reasonable requirement that banks maintain a level of solvency suitable for their credit rating. Kuhn explores these issues and develops a model for bank loan portfolios to assess the suitability of various RAPMs for that context ...

This is an important book. The author is a professor of sociology who focuses on the sociology of economics. He set out to make this a sociological look at financial markets and the interplay between financial theory and practice. What he ended up with is more a detailed history of financial theory and its implementation during the 20th century. He interviewed most living academics who ... Read more