Dynamic Hedging: Managing Vanilla and Exotic Options
Nassim Nicholas Taleb. John Wiley & Sons, $59.95 (558pp) ISBN 978-0-471-35347-8
If the dot-com bubble was an age of unabashed risk-taking, the prolonged hangover from that binge has fostered a period of risk aversion; this snappily titled volume is a detailed text of tools that financial organizations can use to hedge even the most minute financial activity. Crafted by an option trader who's slugged it out in the international banking netherworld of derivatives risk, this book tears apart the heady instruments of risk management. This no modern financial history for the business-minded; rather, it's a recipe book for pointy-heads who live deep in the nervous system of the global financial system. Taleb explores the differences between European binary options, Asian options and American single binary options, including a case study on ""the ravages of time."" The book jacket proclaims a text ""in plain English,"" but the book is steeped in jargon and concepts targeted to a reader well familiar with the arcane world of the options market.
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Reviewed on: 08/01/2002