Visual Guide to Financial Markets


Book Description

A highly visual look at major investment opportunities from the minds at Bloomberg The essential guide for anyone trying to get a handle on the fundamentals of investing, the Bloomberg Visual Guide to Financial Markets distills 30 years of Bloomberg expertise into one straightforward, easy-to-read volume. The book teaches readers about three basic investment options—governments, companies, and real assets, including gold and other commodities—and offers valuable insights into money-market securities, bonds, stocks, derivatives, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, and alternatives. Designed to help financial professionals, students of finance, and individual investors understand the markets in which they're investing, the book begins with simple investments before moving on to more complex choices. Explains bonds, stocks, derivatives, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, and alternatives such as hedge funds Explores the three Rs of returns, risks, and relative value that are associated with each type of investment Provides a highly visual presentation with an emphasis on graphics and professional applications The Bloomberg Visual Guide to Financial Markets gives the reader a clear picture of what underlies market structure, instruments, and dynamics and how to capitalize on these elements.




Financial Times Guide to the Financial Markets


Book Description

From bestselling author Glen Arnold, this is a jargon-busting book that describes how financial markets work, where they are located and how they impact on everyday life. It assumes no specialised prior knowledge of finance theory and provides an authoritative and comprehensive run-down of the workings of the modern financial system. Using real world examples from media such as the Financial Times, Arnold gives an international perspective on the financial markets with frequent comparisons in the workings of major financial centres such as the Bank of England and the City, the Federal Reserve System and Wall Street, the Japanese Central Bank, the European Central Bank and IMF and World Bank. The full text downloaded to your computer With eBooks you can: search for key concepts, words and phrases make highlights and notes as you study share your notes with friends eBooks are downloaded to your computer and accessible either offline through the Bookshelf (available as a free download), available online and also via the iPad and Android apps. Upon purchase, you'll gain instant access to this eBook. Time limit The eBooks products do not have an expiry date. You will continue to access your digital ebook products whilst you have your Bookshelf installed.




Finance and Financial Markets


Book Description

This popular textbook offers a broad and accessible introduction to the building blocks of modern finance: financial markets, institutions and instruments. Focussing on the core elements of the subject, the author blends theory with real-life data, cases and numerical worked examples, linking the material to practice at just the right level of technical complexity. This new edition has updated data and cases throughout, ensuring that it is as up-to-date as possible in this fast-moving area. More assessment and self-test resources have been added to the book to help support students and lecturers. It is ideally suited to students at all levels who take economics, business and finance courses, as well as for those who want to understand the workings of the modern financial world. New to this Edition: - New case studies, including coverage of the Libor and foreign exchange rigging scandals, Bitcoin, the FinTech revolution and issues raised by Brexit - Fully updated data and relevant numerical examples - Coverage of derivatives such as futures, options and swaps - Extensive discussion of regulatory developments since the financial crisis - A companion website featuring teaching resources is available




Market Evolution


Book Description

Today's investors face a challenging environment like none before. The factors that affect financial markets are evolving rapidly and the changes may surprise unprepared investors with investment performance that is below the average of recent decades. Jeffrey Kleintop, author and financial expert, understands that these conditions place a premium on adaptation and innovation-making proactive investment decision-making more valuable than ever. He also knows that in today's investment environment, a new approach to active portfolio management-one that incorporates both strategic and tactical allocations to various asset classes-is necessary to exploit opportunities, manage risk, and achieve financial goals. In Market Evolution, Kleintop offers his unique view of today's financial markets and the trends that may shape investment performance during the next ten years. This book is a practical guide that provides investors with the robust framework that they need to meet the challenges of this new market environment and win. Jeffrey Kleintop (Philadelphia, PA) is the Chief Investment Strategist of PNC Advisors, one of the largest wealth managers in the United States. He is also the coportfolio manager of PNC's Advantage Portfolios. Recently named by the Wall Street Journal as one of "Wall Street's Best and Brightest," Mr. Kleintop is regularly quoted in many national publications, such as BusinessWeek and the New York Times. He is also a regular guest on national radio and television financial programs.







Infectious Greed


Book Description

As the global financial crisis unfolds people everywhere are seeking to understand how markets devolved to this perilous, volatile state. In this dazzling and meticulously researched work of financial history, first published in 2003, and now thoroughly revised and updated, law professor and financial expert Frank Partnoy tells the story of how "classical" Wall Street securities like stocks and bonds were quietly eclipsed by ever more "quantum" products like derivatives. He documents how, starting in the mid-1980s, each new level of financial risk and complexity obscured the sickness of corporate America, and how Wall Street's evolving paradigm moved farther and farther beyond the understanding -- and regulation -- of ordinary investors and government overseers, leading inevitably to disaster.




Life in the Financial Markets


Book Description

An accessible and thorough review of the international financial markets Life in the Financial Markets—How They Really Work And Why They Matter To You offers the financial services professional, and anyone interested in knowing more about the profession, an entertaining and comprehensive analysis of the financial markets and the financial services industry. Written by Daniel Lacalle—a noted portfolio manager with EcoFin and well-known media personality—the book goes beyond a simple summary and offers solid advice on the future of the global financial markets. This great resource also includes a review of effective strategies and forecasts the trends that represent potential opportunities for investors. The book reviews the recent history of the financial crisis and includes information on hot topics such as derivatives and high frequency trading. An in-depth section on investment banking is written from the perspective of a successful practitioner and provides clarity on several complex and overly politicized elements of the banking system. The author gives an expert's perspective on the debt markets, monetary policies, and quantitative easing, and helps explain the various issues surrounding sovereign debt, the Euro crisis, and austerity versus growth policies. Comprehensive in scope, this resource also offers an analysis of investment styles, from hedge funds to "long only" investments, as well as an in-depth look at corporate communication and its impact on markets and investments. Offers an engaging and comprehensive analysis of the financial services industry Includes information on the workings of the global financial system following the economic crisis Contains a review of complex banking systems Analyzes the various investment styles and answers the most common questions pertaining to investing




Managed by the Markets


Book Description

The current economic crisis reveals just how central finance has become to American life. Problems with obscure securities created on Wall Street radiated outward to threaten the retirement security of pensioners in Florida and Arizona, the homes and college savings of families in Detroit and Southern California, and ultimately the global economy itself. The American government took on vast new debt to bail out the financial system, while the government-owned investment funds of Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Malaysia, and China bought up much of what was left of Wall Street. How did we get into this mess, and what does it all mean? Managed by the Markets explains how finance replaced manufacturing at the center of the American economy and how its influence has seeped into daily life. From corporations operated to create shareholder value, to banks that became portals to financial markets, to governments seeking to regulate or profit from footloose capital, to households with savings, pensions, and mortgages that rise and fall with the market, life in post-industrial America is tied to finance to an unprecedented degree. Managed by the Markets provides a guide to how we got here and unpacks the consequences of linking the well-being of society too closely to financial markets.




Inefficient Markets


Book Description

The efficient markets hypothesis has been the central proposition in finance for nearly thirty years. It states that securities prices in financial markets must equal fundamental values, either because all investors are rational or because arbitrage eliminates pricing anomalies. This book describes an alternative approach to the study of financial markets: behavioral finance. This approach starts with an observation that the assumptions of investor rationality and perfect arbitrage are overwhelmingly contradicted by both psychological and institutional evidence. In actual financial markets, less than fully rational investors trade against arbitrageurs whose resources are limited by risk aversion, short horizons, and agency problems. The book presents and empirically evaluates models of such inefficient markets. Behavioral finance models both explain the available financial data better than does the efficient markets hypothesis and generate new empirical predictions. These models can account for such anomalies as the superior performance of value stocks, the closed end fund puzzle, the high returns on stocks included in market indices, the persistence of stock price bubbles, and even the collapse of several well-known hedge funds in 1998. By summarizing and expanding the research in behavioral finance, the book builds a new theoretical and empirical foundation for the economic analysis of real-world markets.




Financial Informatics


Book Description

The Brody-Hughston-Macrina approach to information-based asset pricing introduces a new way of looking at the mechanisms determining price movements in financial markets. The resulting theory of financial informatics is applicable across a wide range of asset classes and is distinguished by its emphasis on the explicit modelling of market information flows. In the BHM theory, each asset is defined by a collection of cash flows and each such cash flow is associated with a family of one or more so-called information processes that provide partial information about the cash flow. The theory is highly appealing on an intuitive basis: it is directly applicable to trading, investment and risk management - and yet at the same time leads to interesting mathematics. The present volume brings together a collection of 18 foundational papers of the subject by Brody, Hughston, and Macrina, many written in collaboration with various co-authors. There is a preface summarizing the current status of the theory, together with a brief history and bibliography of the subject. This book will be of great interest both to newcomers to financial mathematics as well as to established researchers in the subject.