The Private Equity Toolkit

An accessible, thorough introduction to quantitative finance Does the complex world of quantitative finance make you quiver? You're not alone! It's a tough subject for even high-level financial gurus to grasp, but Quantitative Finance For Dummies offers plain-English guidance on making sense of applying mathematics to investing decisions. With this complete guide, you'll gain a solid understanding of futures, options and risk, and get up-to-speed on the most popular equations, methods, formulas and models (such as the Black-Scholes model) that are applied in quantitative finance. Also known as mathematical finance, quantitative finance is the field of mathematics applied to financial markets. It's a highly technical discipline—but almost all investment companies and hedge funds use quantitative methods. This fun and friendly guide breaks the subject of quantitative finance down to easily digestible parts, making it approachable for personal investors and finance students alike. With the help of Quantitative Finance For Dummies, you'll learn the mathematical skills necessary for success with quantitative finance, the most up-to-date portfolio and risk management applications and everything you need to know about basic derivatives pricing. Covers the core models, formulas and methods used in quantitative finance Includes examples and brief exercises to help augment your understanding of QF Provides an easy-to-follow introduction to the complex world of quantitative finance Explains how QF methods are used to define the current market value of a derivative security Whether you're an aspiring quant or a top-tier personal investor, Quantitative Finance For Dummies is your go-to guide for coming to grips with QF/risk management.

Risk management strategy for the pioneering technological sector Enterprise Risk and Opportunity Management provides much-needed guidance tailored specifically to the technological sector. While most enterprise risk management guides are written for traditional businesses and finance firms, this book translates effective enterprise risk and opportunity management (EROM) principles into strategies and practices that work for government, nonprofit, and for-profit organizations in the technological space. Originally designed for noncommercial pioneering enterprises like NASA, an entire chapter is now devoted toward applying the methods to profit-making technological enterprises. A 40-year veteran of the tech sector, Dr. Allan Benjamin outlines risk management strategies for organizations in which the advancement and integration of science and technology within complex systems is necessary for accomplishment of the mission. Commercial EROM strategies do not translate directly when the development and implementation of risky technologies is the organization's primary objective, and clumsy or near-sighted implementation can easily cripple progress. This book provides authoritative guidance tailored to the sector's specialized needs. Maximize opportunity while effectively managing risk Understand the core principles of the technological EROM approach and its interfaces with the management of the organization Comprehend the intricacies of aggregating risks and opportunities from lower to higher levels of the organization Gain expert insights specific to the technology sector Mitigate and control the risk that comes with pursuing discovery In practice, EROM in this sector involves working with mostly qualitative data, and is characterized by high uncertainty. Managing risk without handicapping the organization requires a specific set of adjustments to traditional EROM, and a more nuanced approach to the idea of "acceptable risk. Balance is key in technological EROM, and Enterprise Risk and Opportunity Management provides foundational guidance, real-world strategy, and enlightening examples for getting it right.

Development of emerging countries is often enabled through non-conventional finance. Indeed, the prohibition of interest and some other impediments require understanding conventional finance and Islamic finance, which both seek to be ethical and socially responsible. Thus, comparing and understanding the features of Islamic banking and conventional banking, in a globalized economy, is fundamental. This book explains the features of both conventional and Islamic banking within the current international context. It also provides a comparative view of banking governance, performance and risk-taking of both finance systems. It will be of particular use to practitioners and researchers, as well as to organizations and companies who are interested in conventional and Islamic banking.

A comprehensive guide to the current theories and methodologies intrinsic to fixed-income securities Written by well-known experts from a cross section of academia and finance, Handbook of Fixed-Income Securities features a compilation of the most up-to-date fixed-income securities techniques and methods. The book presents crucial topics of fixed income in an accessible and logical format. Emphasizing empirical research and real-life applications, the book explores a wide range of topics from the risk and return of fixed-income investments, to the impact of monetary policy on interest rates, to the post-crisis new regulatory landscape. Well organized to cover critical topics in fixed income, Handbook of Fixed-Income Securities is divided into eight main sections that feature: • An introduction to fixed-income markets such as Treasury bonds, inflation-protected securities, money markets, mortgage-backed securities, and the basic analytics that characterize them • Monetary policy and fixed-income markets, which highlight the recent empirical evidence on the central banks’ influence on interest rates, including the recent quantitative easing experiments • Interest rate risk measurement and management with a special focus on the most recent techniques and methodologies for asset-liability management under regulatory constraints • The predictability of bond returns with a critical discussion of the empirical evidence on time-varying bond risk premia, both in the United States and abroad, and their sources, such as liquidity and volatility • Advanced topics, with a focus on the most recent research on term structure models and econometrics, the dynamics of bond illiquidity, and the puzzling dynamics of stocks and bonds • Derivatives markets, including a detailed discussion of the new regulatory landscape after the financial crisis and an introduction to no-arbitrage derivatives pricing • Further topics on derivatives pricing that cover modern valuation techniques, such as Monte Carlo simulations, volatility surfaces, and no-arbitrage pricing with regulatory constraints • Corporate and sovereign bonds with a detailed discussion of the tools required to analyze default risk, the relevant empirical evidence, and a special focus on the recent sovereign crises A complete reference for practitioners in the fields of finance, business, applied statistics, econometrics, and engineering, Handbook of Fixed-Income Securities is also a useful supplementary textbook for graduate and MBA-level courses on fixed-income securities, risk management, volatility, bonds, derivatives, and financial markets. Pietro Veronesi, PhD, is Roman Family Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he teaches Masters and PhD-level courses in fixed income, risk management, and asset pricing. Published in leading academic journals and honored by numerous awards, his research focuses on stock and bond valuation, return predictability, bubbles and crashes, and the relation between asset prices and government policies.

The latest tools and techniques for pricing and risk management This book introduces readers to the use of copula functions to represent the dynamics of financial assets and risk factors, integrated temporal and cross-section applications. The first part of the book will briefly introduce the standard the theory of copula functions, before examining the link between copulas and Markov processes. It will then introduce new techniques to design Markov processes that are suited to represent the dynamics of market risk factors and their co-movement, providing techniques to both estimate and simulate such dynamics. The second part of the book will show readers how to apply these methods to the evaluation of pricing of multivariate derivative contracts in the equity and credit markets. It will then move on to explore the applications of joint temporal and cross-section aggregation to the problem of risk integration.