Download or read book Plight of the Fortune Tellers written by Riccardo Rebonato and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2007-09-17 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today's top financial-risk professionals have come to rely on ever-more sophisticated mathematics in their attempts to come to grips with financial risk. But this excessive reliance on quantitative precision is misleading--and it puts us all at risk. This is the case that Riccardo Rebonato makes in Plight of the Fortune Tellers--and coming from someone who is both an experienced market professional and an academic, this heresy is worth listening to. Rebonato forcefully argues that we must restore genuine decision making to our financial planning, and he shows us how to do it using probability, experimental psychology, and decision theory. This is the only way to effectively manage financial risk in a manner congruent with how human beings actually react to chance. Rebonato challenges us to rethink the standard wisdom about probability in financial-risk management. Risk managers have become obsessed with measuring risk and believe that these quantitative results by themselves can guide sound financial choices--but they can't. In this book, Rebonato offers a radical yet surprisingly commonsense solution, one that seeks to remind us that managing risk comes down to real people making decisions under uncertainty. Plight of the Fortune Tellers is not only a book for the decision makers of Wall Street, it's a must-read for anyone concerned about how today's financial markets are run. The stakes have never been higher--can you risk it?
Download or read book Plight of the Fortune Tellers written by Riccardo Rebonato and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-11-08 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today's top financial professionals have come to rely on ever-more sophisticated mathematics in their attempts to come to grips with financial risk. But this excessive reliance on quantitative precision is misleading--and puts everyone at risk. In Plight of the Fortune Tellers, Riccardo Rebonato forcefully argues that we must restore genuine decision making to our financial planning. Presenting a financial model that uses probability, experimental psychology, and decision theory, Rebonato challenges us to rethink the standard wisdom about risk management. He offers a radical yet surprisingly commonsense solution: managing risk comes down to real people making decisions under uncertainty. Plight of the Fortune Tellers is a must-read for anyone concerned about how today's financial markets are run. In a new preface, Rebonato explains how the ideas presented in this book fit into the context of the global financial crisis that followed its original publication. He argues that risk managers are still stuck in a probabilistic rut, and need to engage with the structural causes of real events.
Download or read book The End of Theory written by Richard Bookstaber and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth look at how to account for the human complexities at the heart of today’s financial system Our economy may have recovered from the Great Recession—but not our economics. The End of Theory discusses why the human condition and the radical uncertainty of our world renders the standard economic model—and the theory behind it—useless for dealing with financial crises. What model should replace it? None. At least not any version we’ve been using for the past two hundred years. Richard Bookstaber argues for a new approach called agent-based economics, one that takes as a starting point the fact that we are humans, not the optimizing automatons that standard economics assumes we are. Sweeping aside the historic failure of twentieth-century economics, The End of Theory offers a novel perspective and more realistic framework to help prevent today's financial system from blowing up again.
Download or read book Modern Pricing of Interest Rate Derivatives written by Riccardo Rebonato and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-16 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, interest-rate modeling has developed rapidly in terms of both practice and theory. The academic and practitioners' communities, however, have not always communicated as productively as would have been desirable. As a result, their research programs have often developed with little constructive interference. In this book, Riccardo Rebonato draws on his academic and professional experience, straddling both sides of the divide to bring together and build on what theory and trading have to offer. Rebonato begins by presenting the conceptual foundations for the application of the LIBOR market model to the pricing of interest-rate derivatives. Next he treats in great detail the calibration of this model to market prices, asking how possible and advisable it is to enforce a simultaneous fitting to several market observables. He does so with an eye not only to mathematical feasibility but also to financial justification, while devoting special scrutiny to the implications of market incompleteness. Much of the book concerns an original extension of the LIBOR market model, devised to account for implied volatility smiles. This is done by introducing a stochastic-volatility, displaced-diffusion version of the model. The emphasis again is on the financial justification and on the computational feasibility of the proposed solution to the smile problem. This book is must reading for quantitative researchers in financial houses, sophisticated practitioners in the derivatives area, and students of finance.
Download or read book Finding Fortune written by Delia Ray and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Ren sees her mom heading out to dinner with that creep Rick Littleton, she's furious. How could her mom do that to her dad, a soldier stuck over in Afghanistan? Ren decides to run away to the school-turned-boardinghouse in the next town over. Once there, she makes friends with a boy named Hugh, who tells her that the boardinghouse is the site of a mystery. Every night, the owner, Ms. Baxter, searches for a treasure left in the building years ago. If Ms. Baxter can't find it, then the boarding house might shut down for good, and her dream of preserving the town's history by opening a pearl button museum will never come true. By the time Ren, Hugh, and other visitors help find the treasure-a bag of pearls-Ren and her mom also have found a way to forgive each other.
Download or read book The Fortune Teller s Mah Jongg written by Derek Walters and published by Penguin Putnam. This book was released on 1994 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An enchanting novelty for anyone fascinated by Chinese culture, the game that has challenged players for centuries has been adapted for more mystical pursuits--predicting the future and imparting wisdom. Includes complete instructions and four decks of cards representing the traditional tiles.
Download or read book In the Not Quite Dark written by Dana Johnson and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2016-08-01 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following her prize–winning collection Break Any Woman Down, Dana Johnson returns with a collection of bold stories set mostly in downtown Los Angeles that examine large issues –love, class, race – and how they influence and define our most intimate moments. In "The Liberace Museum," a mixed–race couple leave the South toward the destination of Vegas, crossing miles of road and history to the promised land of consumption; in "Rogues," a young man on break from college lands in his brother's Inland Empire neighborhood during a rash of unexplained robberies; in "She Deserves Everything She Gets," a woman listens to the strict advice given to her spoiled niece about going away to college, reflecting on her own experience and the night she lost her best friend; and in the collection's title story, a man setting down roots in downtown L.A. is haunted by the specter of both gentrification and a young female tourist, whose body was found in the water tower of a neighboring building. With deep insight into character, intimate relationships, and the modern search for personal freedom, In the Not Quite Dark is powerful new work that feels both urgent and timeless.
Download or read book Rational Decisions written by Ken Binmore and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008-12-29 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is widely held that Bayesian decision theory is the final word on how a rational person should make decisions. However, Leonard Savage--the inventor of Bayesian decision theory--argued that it would be ridiculous to use his theory outside the kind of small world in which it is always possible to "look before you leap." If taken seriously, this view makes Bayesian decision theory inappropriate for the large worlds of scientific discovery and macroeconomic enterprise. When is it correct to use Bayesian decision theory--and when does it need to be modified? Using a minimum of mathematics, Rational Decisions clearly explains the foundations of Bayesian decision theory and shows why Savage restricted the theory's application to small worlds. The book is a wide-ranging exploration of standard theories of choice and belief under risk and uncertainty. Ken Binmore discusses the various philosophical attitudes related to the nature of probability and offers resolutions to paradoxes believed to hinder further progress. In arguing that the Bayesian approach to knowledge is inadequate in a large world, Binmore proposes an extension to Bayesian decision theory--allowing the idea of a mixed strategy in game theory to be expanded to a larger set of what Binmore refers to as "muddled" strategies. Written by one of the world's leading game theorists, Rational Decisions is the touchstone for anyone needing a concise, accessible, and expert view on Bayesian decision making.
Download or read book Fortune s Rocks written by Anita Shreve and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 1999-12-02 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Olympia Biddeford's passionate affair with a married man nearly three times her age, results in her being exiled from society and forces her to make a new life for herself.
Download or read book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles written by Jennifer 8 Lee and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2008-02-01 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you think McDonald's is the most ubiquitous restaurant experience in America, consider that there are more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonalds, Burger Kings, and Wendys combined. New York Times reporter and Chinese-American (or American-born Chinese). In her search, Jennifer 8 Lee traces the history of Chinese-American experience through the lens of the food. In a compelling blend of sociology and history, Jenny Lee exposes the indentured servitude Chinese restaurants expect from illegal immigrant chefs, investigates the relationship between Jews and Chinese food, and weaves a personal narrative about her own relationship with Chinese food. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles speaks to the immigrant experience as a whole, and the way it has shaped our country.
Download or read book American Style Derivatives written by Jerome Detemple and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2005-12-09 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on recent developments in the field, American-Style Derivatives provides an extensive treatment of option pricing with emphasis on the valuation of American options on dividend-paying assets. This book reviews valuation principles for European contingent claims and extends the analysis to American contingent claims. It presents basic valuation principles for American options including barrier, capped, and multi-asset options. It also reviews numerical methods for option pricing and compares their relative performance. Ideal for students and researchers in quantitative finance, this material is accessible to those with a background in stochastic processes or derivative securities.
Download or read book Hand to Mouth written by Linda Tirado and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The real-life Nickel and Dimed—the author of the wildly popular “Poverty Thoughts” essay tells what it’s like to be working poor in America. ONE OF THE FIVE MOST IMPORTANT BOOKS OF THE YEAR--Esquire “DEVASTATINGLY SMART AND FUNNY. I am the author of Nickel and Dimed, which tells the story of my own brief attempt, as a semi-undercover journalist, to survive on low-wage retail and service jobs. TIRADO IS THE REAL THING.”—Barbara Ehrenreich, from the Foreword As the haves and have-nots grow more separate and unequal in America, the working poor don’t get heard from much. Now they have a voice—and it’s forthright, funny, and just a little bit furious. Here, Linda Tirado tells what it’s like, day after day, to work, eat, shop, raise kids, and keep a roof over your head without enough money. She also answers questions often asked about those who live on or near minimum wage: Why don’t they get better jobs? Why don’t they make better choices? Why do they smoke cigarettes and have ugly lawns? Why don’t they borrow from their parents? Enlightening and entertaining, Hand to Mouth opens up a new and much-needed dialogue between the people who just don’t have it and the people who just don’t get it.
Download or read book The SABR LIBOR Market Model written by Riccardo Rebonato and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a major innovation in the interest rate space. It explains a financially motivated extension of the LIBOR Market model which accurately reproduces the prices for plain vanilla hedging instruments (swaptions and caplets) of all strikes and maturities produced by the SABR model. The authors show how to accurately recover the whole of the SABR smile surface using their extension of the LIBOR market model. This is not just a new model, this is a new way of option pricing that takes into account the need to calibrate as accurately as possible to the plain vanilla reference hedging instruments and the need to obtain prices and hedges in reasonable time whilst reproducing a realistic future evolution of the smile surface. It removes the hard choice between accuracy and time because the framework that the authors provide reproduces today's market prices of plain vanilla options almost exactly and simultaneously gives a reasonable future evolution for the smile surface. The authors take the SABR model as the starting point for their extension of the LMM because it is a good model for European options. The problem, however with SABR is that it treats each European option in isolation and the processes for the various underlyings (forward and swap rates) do not talk to each other so it isn't obvious how to relate these processes into the dynamics of the whole yield curve. With this new model, the authors bring the dynamics of the various forward rates and stochastic volatilities under a single umbrella. To ensure the absence of arbitrage they derive drift adjustments to be applied to both the forward rates and their volatilities. When this is completed, complex derivatives that depend on the joint realisation of all relevant forward rates can now be priced. Contents THE THEORETICAL SET-UP The Libor Market model The SABR Model The LMM-SABR Model IMPLEMENTATION AND CALIBRATION Calibrating the LMM-SABR model to Market Caplet prices Calibrating the LMM/SABR model to Market Swaption Prices Calibrating the Correlation Structure EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE The Empirical problem Estimating the volatility of the forward rates Estimating the correlation structure Estimating the volatility of the volatility HEDGING Hedging the Volatility Structure Hedging the Correlation Structure Hedging in conditions of market stress
Download or read book Future Babble written by Dan Gardner and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2010-10-12 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2008, as the price of oil surged above $140 a barrel, experts said it would soon hit $200; a few months later it plunged to $30. In 1967, they said the USSR would have one of the fastest-growing economies in the year 2000; in 2000, the USSR did not exist. In 1911, it was pronounced that there would be no more wars in Europe; we all know how that turned out. Face it, experts are about as accurate as dart-throwing monkeys. And yet every day we ask them to predict the future — everything from the weather to the likelihood of a catastrophic terrorist attack. Future Babble is the first book to examine this phenomenon, showing why our brains yearn for certainty about the future, why we are attracted to those who predict it confidently, and why it’s so easy for us to ignore the trail of outrageously wrong forecasts. In this fast-paced, example-packed, sometimes darkly hilarious book, journalist Dan Gardner shows how seminal research by UC Berkeley professor Philip Tetlock proved that pundits who are more famous are less accurate — and the average expert is no more accurate than a flipped coin. Gardner also draws on current research in cognitive psychology, political science, and behavioral economics to discover something quite reassuring: The future is always uncertain, but the end is not always near.
Download or read book A Wild Child s Guide to Endangered Animals written by Millie Marotta and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2019-10-08 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From New York Times bestselling author Millie Marotta comes this gorgeous celebration of the animal kingdom. A Wild Child's Guide to Endangered Animals highlights the plight of 43 endangered species from around the world, including rare and well-known animals living in freshwater, oceans, forests, mountains, tundras, deserts, grasslands, and wetlands. Vivid illustrations bring caribous, axolotls, giraffes, agami herons, and many more to life on these rich and varied pages. Illuminating text relays the story of each species, from how they live and why they are endangered to what is being done about it. Complete with a map detailing where each species can still be found, this visually rich, timely, informative book raises awareness in the most spectacular way.
Download or read book Fortune Smiles written by Adam Johnson and published by Random House. This book was released on 2015-08-18 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The National Book Award–winning story collection from the author of The Orphan Master’s Son offers something rare in fiction: a new way of looking at the world. “MASTERFUL.”—The Washington Post “ENTRANCING.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “PERCEPTIVE AND BRAVE.”—The New York Times Throughout these six stories, Pulitzer Prize winner Adam Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal, giving voice to the perspectives we don’t often hear. In “Nirvana,” a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finds solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States. In “Hurricanes Anonymous,” a young man searches for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. “George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine” follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door. And in the unforgettable title story, Johnson returns to his signature subject, North Korea, depicting two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind. WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Miami Herald • San Francisco Chronicle • USA Today AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • NPR • Marie Claire • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • BuzzFeed • The Daily Beast • Los Angeles Magazine • The Independent • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews “Remarkable . . . Adam Johnson is one of America’s greatest living writers.”—The Huffington Post “Haunting, harrowing . . . Johnson’s writing is as rich in compassion as it is in invention, and that rare combination makes Fortune Smiles worth treasuring.”—USA Today “Fortune Smiles [blends] exotic scenarios, morally compromised characters, high-wire action, rigorously limber prose, dense thickets of emotion, and, most critically, our current techno-moment.”—The Boston Globe “Johnson’s boundary-pushing stories make for exhilarating reading.”—San Francisco Chronicle
Download or read book 2666 written by Roberto Bolaño and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2013-07-09 with total page 1053 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER THE POSTHUMOUS MASTERWORK FROM "ONE OF THE GREATEST AND MOST INFLUENTIAL MODERN WRITERS" (JAMES WOOD, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW) Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño's life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of SantaTeresa—a fictional Juárez—on the U.S.-Mexico border, where hundreds of young factory workers, in the novel as in life, have disappeared.
