Introduction to the Mathematics of Financial Derivatives
Author: Salih Neftci, Salih N. Neftci
List Price: $69.95
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ISBN: 0125153929
Publisher: Academic Press (April, 2000)
Sales Rank: 31,602
Average Customer Rating: 3.84 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
The best intro book ever!
Students of derivative pricing techniques are often in a dilemma: Coming from their MBA or undergrad course, they have just build a "brealy-myers" type of intuition on options. Moving towards Hull then allows a deeper understanding. But any serious (eg PhD, Wall Street Analyst) student of derivatives needs to undertstand the math behind modern derivatives pricing. Essentially, this research divides into two streams: Solving Partial differential equations and developing equivalent Martingales. Without a rigorous pre-education (Maths, Physics), most students fail to understand (let alone learn to use) these methods. Nefci is the only book that does not assume lots of prior knowledge, as compared to Merton (1992) or Duffie (who is so bold to write "for mathematical preparation little beyong undergraduate analysis...is assumed" -ask PhD Students how easy this book reads! The answer is its tough!!). In Short, Neftci's book is a true blessing for all "normal" people. Can't wait to get the second edition!
Rating: 3 out of 5
Good explanations, with serious hand-waving
I used this book to teach a Financial Mathematics course, and found its explanations to be generally clear and good. However, part of the reason the text seems so clear is that it doesn't explain much of what's really going on. It covers the right material, but not really in such a way that the reader can then go on to apply the knowledge gained.This is evidenced by the complete (and almost unforgiveable) lack of exercises in the book. It is very easy to feel you understand this sort of material, only to be completely lost when you actually have to solve a problem. Neftci will not help in this regard. I understand that it is difficult to create good exercises, but their absence almost makes me wonder if Neftci realized he was not explaining things in enough detail to let the student actually work with the knowledge. Exercises are the only way to really learn this subject.A basic problem with all these texts is that, try as they might, they cannot impart true understanding unless the student can grasp real analysis at, say, an undergraduate level typically reached by students at a good engineering school. This text tries to avoid the problem by failing to mention any of the analysis...that's not likely to work.
Rating: 1 out of 5
very poorly written
This book is very poorly written, and turns simple concepts into difficult ones. I highly recommend Hull's book as an alternative. Similar Products
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