Product Description

For undergraduate and graduate courses in Options and Futures, Financial Engineering, and Risk Management, typically found in business, finance, economics and mathematics departments.

This fifth edition text represents how academia and real-world practice have come together with a common respect and focus of theory and practice. It provides a unifying approach to the valuation of all derivatives. This popular course text is considered to be “the bible” by practitioners. The fifth edition has a total of seven new chapters.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #341829 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 744 pages

Review
featured in 5 of the best - Quality World November 2006

From the Back Cover

JOHN C. HULL'S Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives is unique in that it is both a best-selling college textbook and the "bible" in trading rooms throughout the world.

The Fifth Edition continues to offer the most current topics in the field with the addition of seven NEW chapters:

• CHAPTER 4—"Hedging Strategies Using Futures," a new chapter on the use of futures for hedging.
• CHAPTER 20—"More on Models and Numerical Procedures."
• CHAPTER 25—"Swaps Revisited," gives the reader insight into the range of nonstandard swap products.
• CHAPTER 27—"Credit Derivatives," explains how these products work and how they should be valued.
• CHAPTER 28—"Real Options," provides realistic examples showing how the real options approach can be used in capital investment appraisal.
• CHAPTER 29—"Insurance, heather, and Energy Derivatives," explains non-traditional derivatives and their role in risk management.
• CHAPTER 30—"Derivatives, Mishaps, and What We Can Learn From Them."

A new version of DerivaGem Software (Version 1.50) comes with every copy of the text. It includes a new Applications Builder module. Updates to the software can be downloaded from www.prenhall.com/hull.

About the Author
John Hull lectures at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management from the University of Toronto.

Customer Reviews

One for applied mathies (no lemmas here)
"Options, Futures and Other Derivatives", Hull and/or "Financial Calculus: An Introduction to Derivative Pricing", Baxter & Rennie.

Either of these books individually would represent a good grounding in the mathematics underlying derivative pricing. The two books are very different to each other, though, and it is worth the reader considering his preferred approach before parting with cash. The main differences between the books are:

1. Baxter & Rennie follow a "pure maths" approach, basing the theory around a succession of mathematical theorems. Hull describes this approach in a later chapter, but builds up the theory using an "applied maths" approach, deriving a partial differential equation satisfied by derivative prices.

2. Hull includes background information on the derivative markets; Baxter & Rennie do not.

3. Hull describes how derivatives can be priced in practice, using techniques like Monte Carlo and trees; Baxter & Rennie do not.

If I had to choose one book, my personal preference would be for Hull, but this probably reflects my choice of degree courses. But having read Baxter & Rennie after Hull, my opinion is that the books compliment each other well. When things get so complicated that the intuitive realism of applied maths needs to give way to abstract pure maths (for example in considering quantos or yield curve models), the Baxter & Rennie approach is easier to follow.

A Sound theoretical foundation to the topic
I bought this books mainly to complement my knowledge for a new job, but it was also something I had in my list of books to buy for a while.

John Hull's analysis is very complete and comprehensive. The book requires a foundation knowledge of high-school / engineering algebra and calculus (maybe statistics too).

Being a novice to derivatives trading, I am still wading my way though half-way of the book, with frequient revisit to the previous chapters.

I would highly recommend this to the reader who is serious into understanding the intricacies of derivatives, and who would be patient to go though all the undepinning mathematics.

I would have given this five (or more) stars, if John Hull had included a couple of chapters explaining the very basics for the beginner, and had SOME solutions to the end-of-chapter excercises, rather than having all in another book, "Solution manual to options,...".

Written with rare clarity.
This book ('Hull') is an excellent introduction and guide to derivatives. It's also a good reference - there's enough information so that you probably won't feel you need to buy another, deeper book.

The emphasis is on a description of the various products, as well as how to price them. The emphasis stays on the theory of pricing, rather than delving right down into computer algorithms, so if you need to write derivatives software, I recommend the excellent 'C++ Design Patterns and Derivatives Pricing' by Mark Joshi - but read this book first.

This should definitely be your first book on derivatives. Only after reading several other books on derivatives, after first reading 'Hull', did I realise how clear his book is, and how some other authors manage to make things so confusing.