Options, Futures and Other Derivatives (6th Edition) | John C. Hull

Options, Futures and Other Derivatives (6th Edition) | John C. Hull | Academics Unite!

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Options, Futures a...

	Options, Futures and Other Derivatives (6th Edition) John C. Hull Prentice Hall, 2005 - 816 pages average customer review:based on 71 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The bible of derivatives

As the title of this review indicates, this is _the_ book out of many for financial derivatives. It is by no means the only thing you'll need, but it is a great book for a solid foundation in the subject. In short, this book should adorn every finance dork's library.

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Academics Unite!

Prof. Hull writes a comprehesive and complete work on the subject matter. However, it is intended for and heavily emphasizes the mathematics rather than practical use. For instance, included is a very elegant presentation of the Black-Scholes formula's proof. How often do you need those kinds of things in real life? Probably slightly more than you need the complete explanation of "generalized autoregressive conditional hetroskedasticity" to better grasp volatility mean reversion.

As a Canadian professor, he conveys much broader attention and respect to non-US trading venues and instruments. His writing does tend to become classroom like and is not filled with many trading examples or wit.

In sum, I enjoyed his book and will likely use it as reference material in the future. However, its not a truly "applied" reading.

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A must-have on your shelf

Both academics and financial practitioners (particularly those who are involved in derivatives) must have a copy on their shelf. It serves as a useful reference to refresh any fading memory since it is quite comprehensive and covers practically the whole spectrum of derivatives.

For undergraduates, there is another version entitled "Fundamentals of Futures and Options Markets" which is highly regarded the standard text for any derivatives course !

The book must be updated with the emergence of BICs

This book is just great. I just wish there could be a new edition that incorpoarate the BICs paradigm. More info on BICs can be found at http://www.4bics.org - BICs appears to be a too important concept to ignore,I understand its very recent but I hope prof hull will think about it

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All theory -- not practical at all

Despite a wide coverage of topics, the book is way over priced. It is written at purely academic level and of limited use to practioners, quants, and traders who want to use and develop derivatives models. The books focuses on theory and the material is too simplistic. Important details on how to use or implement the models in practice is completely lacking. For instance, the book does not discuss the details for how to actually calibrate the parameters of the models to actual market data.

If you want to learn the material in detail and how derivatives securities are actually modeled and implemented in practice using real-world data, I would strongly recommend a book like Modeling Derivatives in C++ or Principles of Financial Engineering.

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