All About Derivatives (All About)

List Price: $18.95 Discount Price: $9.81

Customer Reviews:

An Excellent Introduction to Derivatives [Posted on 2006-11-30]
This is an extremely well-written introduction to derivatives. I used it as a supplement to a graduate course in Risk Management which had assigned Don Chase's classic book. I found this book to be much more readable, with less formal notation and fewer equations to wade through (not to mention being much cheaper and easier to carry around). Despite its small size, it still manages to convey the essential characteristics of the major types of derivatives (forwards, futures, swaps, options, and credit derivatives) and how they are priced, without getting bogged down in excessive theory. It's written in a pleasant, conversational style, with (horrors!) even a dash of humor thrown in. It contains the right amount of detail and math in the main text, with a series of appendices and nicely separated subsections for the more mathematically inclined. It's a great introductory text, and I strongly recommend it for anyone starting out in the subject.

Wow! [Posted on 2007-07-17]
I am a newbie in the world of financial mathematics and needed to learn the concepts related to derivatives. I was told to read Hull's book, but I ended stuck in some of the early chapters because of the definitions apparently aimed at someone who already has had a background course in Finance.
Using online resources didnt help that much, and I was getting rather desparate. Then I landed on this one and all my worries are disolving away as I read this extremely helpful book.
OK there are passages where the author feels we might be terrified of mathematical formalism, but I wont hold it against him.
I am no longer stuck in a Hull.
This book is a joy.

Very good beginner book to derivatives [Posted on 2007-08-23]
I would definitely recommend this book for a reader who is looking for some ground work to be laid within the world of derivatives. Durbin gives a simple introduction into the many different types of derivatives; however he will delve into the math behind some derivatives; if the reader is not interested he will let you know which mathematics heavy sections you can skip. I would read another book written by Michael Durbin.

All About Derivatives - Book and Delivery Review [Posted on 2008-07-10]
The book was received in the exact condition as described and was delivered expeditiously. I am very satisfied with the book and the timely delivery.

The Book is OK, But Not That Great. [Posted on 2008-09-04]
I picked up this book for two reasons. I wanted to learn what derivatives are, and I wanted to learn about the math around them. At first glance, in the bookstore, it looked like this book would meet my needs. Now, I have to say that this the first book I ever read about derivatives and have nothing to compare it to.

The first few chapters do a good job explaining what derivatives are and how they are used, thought I found the chapter on swaps somewhat confusing despite reading that chapter twice. However, I found the conversational nature of his writing, and the frequent drift into sidebar discussions, quite distracting. The chapters on pricing derivatives were a worse.

In the pricing chapters I found the basic explanations ok, but there are a number of errors and typos that make those chapters confusing. The author also changes terminology occasionally and that is a little confusing. At one point I emailed the author asking about things I found confusing the response I got was to go and look at the errata list on his web site. I found I had to read the section on the Black-Scholes model backwards because the second half of that section gave me what I needed to understand the first half.

I found the explanation of the math most frustrating. The equations use symbols to mean something different than I would expect based on how those symbols are used in math and science texts. For example, he uses Greek delta to mean "amount of" instead of "change in." Now, perhaps this is the standard usage in the financial field, but that isn't explained very well. In many cases the author does not explain what the terms in the equations are, where their values come from, or what they are measuring. This would go a long way in helping the reader to understand the math better.

In summary, like my headline says, the book is ok, but not that great. Perhaps other books on the subject are very bad, but I would advise reviewing other texts for a bit before buying this one.

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