Product Description

This popular text, publishing Spring 1999 in its Second Edition, introduces the mathematics underlying the pricing of derivatives. The increase of interest in dynamic pricing models stems from their applicability to practical situations: with the freeing of exchange, interest rates, and capital controls, the market for derivative products has matured and pricing models have become more accurate. Professor Neftci's book answers the need for a resource targeting professionals, Ph.D. students, and advanced MBA students who are specifically interested in these financial products. The Second Edition is designed to make the book the main text in first year masters and Ph.D. programs for certain courses, and will continue to be an important manual for market professionals.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #183640 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 527 pages

Review
Praise for the First Edition:
"An excellent treatment of the mathematics underlying the pricing of derivatives."
- John Hull, University of Toronto, Canada

"This book will be a major convenience to derivatives traders, risk managers, and other users and developers of derivatives models. It greatly reduces the cost of entry into the mathematical world of valuation, hedging, and risk measurement for derivatives positions."
- J. Darrell Duffie, Stanford University

"As an introduction to the mathematics underlying the pricing of derivatives, the book succeeds admirably."
- Journal of Economic Literature -- Review

Review
PRAISE FOR THE FIRST EDITION:
"An excellent treatment of the mathematics underlying the pricing of derivatives."
—JOHN HULL, University of Toronto

"This book will be a major convenience to derivatives traders, risk managers, and other users and developers of derivatives models. It greatly reduces the cost of entry into the mathematical world of valuation, hedging, and risk measurement for derivatives positions."
—J. DARRELL DUFFIE, Stanford University

PRAISE FOR THE SECOND EDITION:
"As an introduction to the mathematics underlying the pricing of derivatives, the book succeeds admirably."
—JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC LITERATURE

"This book is a self-contained first step into mathematical finance, and it covers the fundamentals of the topic beautifully. The conclusions and references at the end of each chapter are very useful. The former provides a broad picture of each chapter's content. The latter offer invaluable links for those who would like a more detailed discussion..."
—SIAM Review (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics)

From the Back Cover
Praise for the First Edition
"An excellent treatment of the mathematics underlying the pricing of derivatives."
--JOHN HULL, University of Toronto
"This book will be a major convenience to derivatives traders, risk managers, and other users and developers of derivatives models. It greatly reduces the cost of entry into the mathematical world of valuation, hedging, and risk measurement for derivatives positions."
--J. DARRELL DUFFIE, Stanford University
"As an introduction to the mathematics underlying the pricing of derivatives, the book succeeds admirably."
--JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC LITERATURE
The intuitive, step-by-step approach of this book makes it one of the most accessible and popular explanations of the mathematical models used to price derivatives. For the Second Edition, Salih Neftci has thoroughly expanded one chapter, added six new ones, and inserted chapter-concluding exercises. He does not assume that the reader has a thorough mathematical background, and the math is lucid and fresh. His explanations of financial calculus are remarkable for their simplicity and perception.
About the Author:
Salih Neftci completed his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota and subsequently taught at George Washington University, Columbia University, and the Graduate Institute for International Economics, Geneva. He is currently teaching at CUNY Graduate School, New York, New York, and ISMA Centre, University of Reading, UK. Professor Neftci is also a consultant to the Citibank New Products Group in Stamford, Connecticut, and has been a consultant to the World Bank, the U.S. Department of State, and the Agency for International Development. His teaching is in the areas of numerical methods in asset pricing, the mathematics of financial derivatives, emerging market asset trading strategies, and advanced risk management.

Customer Reviews

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.

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!

A valiant and successful attempt
Neftci makes a valiant and serious attempt at explaining stochastic calculus and related mathematics of financial derivatives to the non-expert. I think he succeeds.

The exposition may not be as rigourous as many people expect it to be, but that's the whole point of the exercise: to give the reader an introductory and motivated first exposure to risk neutral measures, martingales, stochastic differentiation and integration, Ito's lemma, PDE's, stochastic PDE's, equivalent martingale measures, Girsanov's theorem, and a lot more.

This is definitely the very first book that a non-mathematician student of the subject should read. No doubt about that. I guess the burning question now is: Which book makes a natural second read? Baxter and Rennie? Bjork? Bingham and Kiesel? I think it should be one of these three.