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Title: Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and unknowns in the dazzling world of derivatives
ISBN: 0273704745
Author:
Satyajit Das
Publicate Date: 2006-05-15
Publish: 2006-05-15
List Price: $29.99
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $17.99
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $18.70
Amazon Merchant Price: $19.79
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Unknown unknowns
As gripping as a mystery novel but as informative as a text book. The author keeps you turning the page with stories from the sell side and the buy side of derivatives.
A must read for any finance student!
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2: Traders, guns, and money
Reads like a 007 license to steal novel. I thought I knew something about how money moves around.
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3: Rumsfeldian "Unknown Unknowns" and Steven Mallory's "drooling beast"
Das starts off with a seemingly improbable story of an Indonesian Noodle maker trying to extricate itself out of currency swaps gone awry. He ends with an hilarious Gridiron style roast of the Rogue Trader. But between these irreverential pages one may find renewed respect for financial risk management with a view towards the "Unknown Unknowns" of Rumsfeldian fame. While rich in anecdotes, Das shows little curiosity as to why the Rogue Trader phenomenon has grown exponentially in recent decades (both in occurrences as well as scale). And it parallels the growth in the size/scale of the Government. These "Unknown Unknowns" are really Steven Mallory's "drooling beast" in the Fountainhead.
Separately, Das cites the following factoid about Kiyoshi Ito:
"Ito was an eccentric Japanese mathematician who later did not remember deriving the eponymous technique at all."
Ito died Nov 10th, 2008 at the age of 93. Mathematicians are indeed long-lived; but their theoretical offerings are immortal.
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4: What audience is this book for?
I can save you a lot of time by summarizing the book. Derivatives are crazy complex. The customers don't understand them. The sellers are con men.
Now imagine your long-winded, boring uncle. He's telling that same story over and over again. And, to render it duller, he gives no real details of the parties and the transaction. He assumes you understand derivatives but you don't so you're clueless about what's going on. Except that it's the same long story, over and over.
This is your basic "bad boy" book -- I, the author, was a bad boy, I fleeced the suckers. But I'm not to give the reader a framework for understanding what was going on.
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5: credit default swap
You'll know what a credit swap is by the time you've finished the book. Be prepared to google some terms at the beginning if you're not a trader. You'll be able to hold forth like a fed chairman or a treasury secretary by the end.
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