Swaps and Other Derivatives (With CD-ROM) (The Wiley Finance Series)

Description

I'm relatively unfamiliar with swaps and after reading the introductory book Derivatives Demystified: A Step-by-Step Guide to Forwards, Futures, Swaps and Options (The Wiley Finance Series) I was hoping to gain more depth. Reading Swaps and Other Derivatives, however, hurt my brain. I believe the other reviewers that this is the best intermediate/advanced book on swaps. The other books I've seen are incomprehensible. At least this one I was able to understand by re-reading examples and reading other (online) resources to accompany this text. It reads like a university textbook. I read this book at a slow crawl. The author's prose is clear but be prepared for page after page of formulas and lengthy examples. However, if you're learning how to do swap pricing, this may be what you need. To give you an idea of what I'm referring to, here's a formula from page 15: " Ft/T = {[(1 + rT * dT)/(1 + rT * dt)] - 1}/(T - t) " This comes after an example of using that formula with values. With the formulas in general, I could really have used a full explanation or a breakdown of what each variable means. Swaps noobs should give this book a pass, you likely won't understand it. If you need to do swap pricing (trading, quants, risk, IT), you'll have to slug it out with this text because there isn't a better swap pricing book around. If you've already got experience in swaps and are looking for depth, this likely will be a good book for you.