Why spam the world with yet another book on finance?
As you can see on my resume page, I have done quite a bit of coursework in finance. I've also worked for a while in a leading financial institution. Through these two channels, I've received a lot of training in finance, and the more I learnt, the more it struck me how much different fields of finance share a lot of intuition and theory. Two areas as different as trading derivative contracts and investing in factory equipment can be treated in similar ways, and formulas that seemingly are worlds apart can be found to be related in a more general setting.
Whereas I felt my coursework and job training had been good, I also felt that no textbooks do a particularly good job highlighting this. I have met many people who have studied finance at a high level, but when met with a problem that is more or less identical to what they learned in school they fail to see the link as they weren't taught the underlying intuition of the theory they studied.
Furthermore, the different fields of finance are rarely treated in the same place even though they share the same underlying theory which in turn means that often people do not have a good overview of the different branches of theory. Why not show the general theory, models and intuition of all the major results of financial theory in the same text? I felt that was possible, and that is why I wrote this book.
What is this book about?
The book is about finance. That probably sounds like too short a description, but nevertheless it is true. It is true because I cover every single topic that needs covering in a first book. I cover each of the three branches of financial theory (matematical finance, financial economics and corporate finance), and do it all ithrough a more or less common framework throughout the book.
In each of the three branches, I go into all major topics, so anyone who has read this book who goes on to a job in finance should be able to draw a link between what they work on and some part or another of the book. I also put a heavy emphasis on making the book practically oriented. This does not mean wasting time on minute details of a certain product or on newspaper cutouts showing how to look up a price. Instead it means spending time on linking the theory to real life situations through intuitive examples as well as covering all products that are commonly met in practice and describe how each of the markets in which they exist functions.
Covering such a vast amount of detail sounds overwhelming, but as you will see if you buy it, the book is fairly short. This is achieved by keeping the maths relatively simple (but not removing it - writing a book that treats mathematical finance without mentioning mathematics is like writing a cookbook without mentioning cooking) and by always giving the neatest derivation of equations (rather than wasting space and time explaining how to do silly things like count how many days there are between today and today+1year - in this book, there is exactly 1year between these two dates).
Why another book?
While working on my first book, and while working as a structurer and trader in Goldman Sachs, it became increasingly clear to me that there is a need for a more practically oriented textbook. A lot of people these days arrive in a capital markets role (trading, sales, structuring, quant) with a background in finance (others don't have such a background - they should read and understand my first book), and yet they still struggle a lot in their first period in the job (II sure did). This textbook is meant to ease that transition.
What is this book about?
I am not quite sure yet - I keep wanting to think about this, but I then keep reminding myself that I still haven't finished my first book. But in general, I will write about how to trade and risk manage different products, what do you need to keep in mind when applying all the theories and models from the first book, how do you choose what to buy and what to sell in a world where markets are supposedly efficient, and how do you make sure that you don't run out of money whilst doing all of these things? A book that does some of this is Nassim Taleb's book on dynamic hedging, so anyone who has read that should have an idea of what I'm aiming at, although I am going to make mine about more than just risk managing an options books.
Why another-another book?
In my work and when reading academic litterature (and debating it), I increasingly feel that there is a lack of understanding of the theory of commercial and central banking (i.e., monetary policy from all angles). I am not necessarily the biggest expert in the subject, but it is a subject where I feel many concepts are misunderstood by most (even respected professors and practitioners), and I thought it could be fun to collect my thoughts and knowledge on the subject in a book.
What is this book about?
Again I am not quite sure yet, and I won't be starting this for a while, but it will basically be about how banking in the modern economy works. It will complement my other writings, so that after reading my books one will have a very good grasp about what it means to work in a bank and what role it serves, from both a theoretical and practical angle.