The alternative investment market (AIM) has seen rapid growth over its 19 years, and has emerged as the market of choice for smaller, newer companies, both in the UK and abroad. However, it has often had a volatile reputation among investors, who have commonly perceived stock in the AIM as more risky than the main market. In this book, a group of leading financial analysts conduct an extensive empirical study to compare the relative volatility of two UK equity markets run by the London Stock Exchange, over a ten year period. They analyse the comparative risks involved in the alternative investment market, the market of growing companies, and the 'main market', the market for more established companies. This book analyses the volatility of the alternative investment market, using a variety of techniques and approaches. It compares the volatility of stocks in the markets, exploring variables such as size, industry, age and market switches. Using refined methods to focus on the difference between the markets, the authors provide a convincing study to challenge the idea that the alternative investment market is higher risk than the main market.

The modern field of asset pricing asks for sound pricing models grounded on the theory of financial economies a la Ingersoll (1987) as weIl as for accu rate estimation techniques a la Hamilton (1994b) when it comes to empirical inferences of the specified model. The idea behind this book on hand is to provide the reader with a canonical framework that shows how to bridge the gap between the continuous-time pricing practice in financial engineering and the capital market data inevitably only available at discrete time intervals. Three major financial markets are to be examined for which we select the equity market, the bond market, and the electricity market. In each mar ket we derive new valuation models to price selected financial instruments in continuous-time. The decision criterium for choosing a continuous-time model ing framework is the richness of the stochastic theory available for continuous time processes with Merton's pioneering contributions to financial economics, collected in Merton (1992). The continuous-time framework, reviewed and as sessed by Sundaresan (2000), allows us to obtain analytical pricing formulae that would be unavailable in a discrete time setting. However, at the time of implementing the derived theoretical pricing models on market data, that is necessarily sampled at discrete time intervals, we work with so-called exact discrete time equivalents a la Bergstrom (1984). We show how to conveniently work within astate space framework which we derive in a general setting as weIl as explicitly for each of the three applications."

Football is often described as a game of inches. First downs, scoring, and in/out of bound decisions that can determine the outcome of the game may even come down to fractions of an inch. Investing is similar: the difference between outperforming or underperforming the market may be a few fractions of a percentage point. As Ben Branch succinctly states, successful investing, defined as outperforming the market averages, is not easy. And yet it is very much a game worth playing, particularly if you win. The key to being on the winning side is to understand the fundamental principles of investing—what it is and how it works—before making any decision. In this highly practical, non-technical guide, Branch introduces the reader to stocks, bonds, options, mutual funds, real estate, futures, and all of the other basic elements of the market. He debunks popular myths and misconceptions about investing and shows you how to avoid mistakes in order to invest wisely. An extensive glossary, definitions and examples, and lists of dos and don'ts will make this book a handy resource for the novice as well as for seasoned investors looking to take their game to the next level. In this highly practical, non-technical guide, Branch provides the building blocks of a multi-dimensional investing approach. First, he reviews the principle of compound interest, the foundation of all investment strategy and performance. Then, arguing that successful investing is a function of three types of activities—selection, timing, and execution—he introduces the reader to stocks, bonds, options, mutual funds, real estate, futures, and all of the other elements of the market. In addition to covering well-known investments in detail, he explains lesser-known opportunities, such as bankruptcies and takeovers. Special topics include the effects of macroeconomic trends and the subtleties of timing for maximum advantage. He debunks popular myths and misconceptions about investing and shows you how to avoid mistakes in order to invest wisely. An extensive glossary, definitions and examples, and lists of dos and don'ts will make this book a handy resource for the novice, as well as for seasoned investors looking to take their game to the next level.

Prosperity Unbound is a provocative new look at real estate and "unreal estate," a problem that afflicts half the world's property owners, living and working outside the formal structures of society. As a World Bank economist in the 1990s, and later as an investment advisor on deregulation, the author has seen first-hand how "unreal estate" distorts and suppresses property values and stunts the development of property markets. Working with the investment finance industry, governments, and owners, and by marrying theory and practice, she has devised an analytical solution - one that was successful in the case of Peru. It may be applied just as successfully elsewhere, unlocking value and opening the door to unbound prosperity.

Prosperity Unbound sheds light on a subject that has long been ignored or dismissed by traditional economists and offers practical guidance for policy makers, government officials, private investors and entrepreneurs who want to create or strengthen property markets and transform "unreal estate" to real estate.
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Technical Analysis of Stock Trends helps investors make smart, profitable trading decisions by providing proven long- and short-term stock trend analysis. It gets right to the heart of effective technical trading concepts, explaining technical theory such as The Dow Theory, reversal patterns, consolidation formations, trends and channels, technical analysis of commodity charts, and advances in investment technology. It also includes a comprehensive guide to trading tactics from long and short goals, stock selection, charting, low and high risk, trend recognition tools, balancing and diversifying the stock portfolio, application of capital, and risk management. This updated new edition includes patterns and modifiable charts that are tighter and more illustrative. Expanded material is also included on Pragmatic Portfolio Theory as a more elegant alternative to Modern Portfolio Theory; and a newer, simpler, and more powerful alternative to Dow Theory is presented. This book is the perfect introduction, giving you the knowledge and wisdom to craft long-term success.

This book describes the dramatic changes that have occurred in the exchange industry during the past two decades. The strategies adopted by major world exchanges during this period are explained and the roles of multilateral trading systems and over-the-counter (OTC) players are clearly described, highlighting their economics and their interconnections with traditional exchanges. Up-to-date, comprehensive comparisons are made of the performances of the main exchanges, and important governance issues are considered. In addition, threats and opportunities for major types of trading venue, deriving either from new regulatory approaches or from the surge in new markets, are presented and discussed with a view to forecasting future developments in the secondary market industry.The background to the book is the strong erosion in traditional profit drivers for exchanges produced by the progress in communications and trading technology. In many countries, regulation has reduced barriers to entry in the equity field, facilitating a surge in new players and a shift of liquidity toward alternative trading platforms and dark pools.

This book explores the role of law and regulation in sustaining financial markets in both developed and developing countries, particularly the European Union, United States and China. The central argument of this book is that law matters for the operation of financial markets, which, in turn, significantly influences the performance of firms, industries, and economies.

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The Role of Law and Regulation in Sustaining Financial Markets" is divided into four parts. Part one addresses the connection between law, financial development, and economic growth. Part two deals with the role of financial regulation, which can be used to correct market failures, such as negative externalities, information asymmetries, and monopolies. Part three focuses on the design, functioning, and performance of different financial instruments. Part four examines the topic of Corporate Social Responsibility. This book contributes to the law and finance literature by studying certain conventional issues, such as the relationship between finance and economic growth, and the effects of regulatory quality on financial development, from new perspectives and/or with new evidence, data, and cases. It also explores novel topics, such as project finance contracts, insurance and climate change, the shadow banking system, that have been overlooked in current literature.

This book is meaningful not only for the EU and the US, which have suffered considerably from the financial crisis of 2008, but also for China, which is struggling to build a sound institutional infrastructure to govern its increasingly complicated financial system. By comparing the regulatory philosophies and practices of the EU, the US and China, this book will help the reader to understand the diverse nature of the global law and finance nexus and avoid succumbing to the myth of "one size fits all.""

Volatility in Korean Capital Markets summarizes the Korean experience of volatile capital flows, analyzes the economic consequences, evaluates the policy measures adopted, and suggests new measures for the future.

This book considers how the inclusion of electronic call auction trading would affect the performance of our U.S. equity markets. The papers it contains focus on the call auction and its role in a hybrid market structure. The purpose is to increase understanding of this trading environment, and to consider the design of a more efficient stock market. A call auction is a form of trading that died out in the pre-computer age but is making its reentrance today as an electronic marketplace. Batching orders for simultaneous execution at a single moment in time at a single price is the essence of call auction trading. Because its determination is based on the full set of orders, the clearing price in a call auction can be thought of as a consensus value.' This contrasts with a continuous market where a transaction is made any time a buy and sell order meet in price, and where price generally fluctuates as the orders meet. Recent advances in computer technology have considerably expanded the call auction's functionality. We suggest that the problems we are facing concerning liquidity, volatility, fragmentation and price discovery are largely endemic to the continuous market, and that the introduction of electronic call auction trading in the U.S. would be the most important innovation in market structure that could be made. This book had its origin in a symposium, Electronic Call Market Trading, that was held at New York University's Salomon Center on April 20, 1995. At the time, three proprietary trading systems based on call auction principles (The Arizona Stock Exchange, Posit, and Instinet's Crossing Network) had been operating for several years and interest already existed in theprocedure. Since the symposium, increasing use has been made of call auctions, primarily by the ParisBourse in its Nouveau Marchi and CAC markets, by Deutsche BArse in its Xetra market, and for fixed income in the U.S. by State Street's BondConnect. Rather than being used as stand alone systems, however, call auctions are now being interfaced with continuous markets so as to produce hybrid market structures, a development to which considerable attention is given in a number of the chapters in this book. The book is divided into three parts. The first, Call Auction Trading, gives an overview of this trading environment. The second, Investor Trading Practices and the Demand for Immediacy, contains the findings of four institutional trader surveys. The third, Market Structure: The Broader Picture, presents a more inclusive view of the development of market structure.

Praise for TREYNOR ON INSTITUTIONAL INVESTING

"Jack Treynor has a mind of his own. I mean that as the highest compliment. Jack Treynor sees what no one else sees, thinks what no one else thinks, explains what no one else explains. You will learn more in fifteen minutes with Jack Treynor than in a full hour with most pundits. You will work hard but you will see things, think things, and understand things as never before. This book is a most valuable treasure, gleaming with Jack Treynor's brilliance."
--Peter L. Bernstein, author, Capital Ideas Evolving

"Vintage Treynor. This is a must-own reference for anyone involved in institutional asset management. It assembles -- in one place -- many of the important insights of one of the most provocative and creative players in the finance world over the past half-century."
--Robert D. Arnott, Chairman, Research Affiliates, and Former Editor, Financial Analysts Journal

"As a practicing investment manager, Treynor always preferred brilliance to soundness. Identifying the flaws in conventional thinking, he shows both the theorist and the practitioner where to invest time in their search for excess return."
--Perry Mehrling, Professor of Economics, Barnard College, Columbia University, author, Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance

"Jack Treynor's new book brings together a lifetime of exploring the important questions surrounding the sophisticated investor's task. Readers of Treynor on Institutional Investing will be richly rewarded by the insights the author has developed about both the practical and the conceptual keys to successful investing."
--Samuel L. Hayes, III, Jacob Schiff Professor of InvestmentBanking Emeritus, Harvard Business School

' ...the author of this book deserves praise for providing a valuable reference for those looking to improve their technical and product knowledge...essential reference material for any derivative-focused credit department.' - Tony Aston of Chase Manhattan, London in Risk;This new edition of Credit Risk of Complex Derivatives is fully updated and enhanced. It discusses and analyses the credit risks of the new financial derivatives. The book commences with an overview of the regulatory environment and the renewed emphasis on risk Management. It then provides a comprehensive review of complex options and swaps, with extensive examples and illustrations. The text concludes with a detailed discussion of portfolio credit risk issues and techniques in order to ensure the most effective and accurate understanding of complex derivative credit risk.

In Portfolio Management , Shan Rajegopal, a leading authority on innovation and project portfolio management, provides an integrated project portfolio management framework which links innovation, investment and implementation. A successful tried and tested method, this blueprint will be a hands-on guide for business executives.

Erik Banks, responsible for global risk management at Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong, has written another text on the derivatives field covering innovation in these instruments in Asia Pacific. The text acts as a detailed reference on the nature of these markets and the prospects for the Asian derivative markets, both listed and OTC. He also includes an analysis of the Australian, New Zealand and Japanese markets to fit the emerging markets into context.

The successful first edition provided an introduction to the valuation and risk management of modern financial instruments, formulated in a precise mathematical expression and comprehensively covering all relevant topics using consistent and exact notation. In this edition, Deutsch continues with this philosophy covering new and more advanced topics including risk adjusted performance and portfolio optimization. This edition also includes a CD-ROM in the form of Excel workbooks giving detailed models of the concepts discussed in the book.

Deterrence of market manipulation is central to the entire regulatory and legal framework governing the operation of American commodity futures markets. However, despite all of the regulatory, scholarly, and legal scrutiny of market manipulation, the subject is widely misunderstood. Federal commodity and securities laws prohibit manipulation, but do not define it. Scholarly research has failed to analyze adequately the causes or effects of manipulation, and the relevant judicial decisions are confused, confusing, and contradictory. The aim of this book is to illuminate the process of market manipulation by presenting a rigorous economic analysis of this phenomenon, including the conditions that facilitate it and its effects on market users and others. The conclusions of this analysis are used to examine critically some legal and regulatory anti-manipulation policies. The Economics, Law and Public Policy of Market Power Manipulation concludes with a set of robust and realistic tests that regulators and jurists can apply to detect and deter manipulation.

Portfolio construction is fundamental to the investment management process. In the 1950s, Harry Markowitz demonstrated the benefits of efficient diversification by formulating a mathematical program for generating the "efficient frontier" to summarize optimal trade-offs between expected return and risk. The Markowitz framework continues to be used as a basis for both practical portfolio construction and emerging research in financial economics. Such concepts as the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and the Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT), for example, provide the foundation for setting benchmarks, for predicting returns and risk, and for performance measurement. This volume showcases original essays by some of todaya (TM)s most prominent academics and practitioners in the field (including Nobel Prize winner, Paul Samuelson) on the contemporary application of Markowitz techniques. Covering a wide spectrum of topics, including portfolio selection, data mining tests, and multi-factor risk models, the book presents a comprehensive approach to portfolio construction tools, models, frameworks, and analyses, with both practical and theoretical implications.

Stock Investing for Everyone

This book is written for a broad category of investors–ranging from the inexperienced part-timer interested in learning more about analyzing stocks and taking advantage of market trends to the seasoned pro, aiming to hone his or her skills and learn more about the latest investment strategies, tools, and techniques.

Written by an exceptionally well qualified author team–one of whom, Vaqar Zuberi, was ranked among the top 5% of proprietary traders for seven years running–Stock Investing for Everyone covers all the bases, from market fundamentals to advanced electronic stock screening and ranking tools. Without abstruse theory or complex mathematics, it supplies clear, step-by-step instructions on how to:

• Research stocks using the Internet, newsletters, company reports, and other major resources
• Use sophisticated stock valuation tools and techniques
• Conduct fundamental and technical analysis
• Analyze key fundamental and momentum indicators such as EPS, trading volume, moving averages, and others
• Recognize and exploit market trends
• Screen and rank stocks using both traditional and the latest electronic tools
• Interpret stock behavior and effectively handle both weakening and red-hot stocks
• Use the investment strategies and techniques of stock market professionals
• Employ sophisticated risk and portfolio management techniques
• Screen stocks using the original, highly effective "Express" method

Stock Investing for Everyone arms you with the knowledge and skills you need to minimize risk and maximize the returns on your stock investments.

Praise for Stock Investing for Everyone

"A valuable source of investment strategies and general investing information for all levels of investors. I work in the financial industry, providing investment research data to individual and institutional investors,and I still learned a great deal from this book. Any investor can use the tools provided here to help make profitable investment decisions. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is beginning to enter the market or to experienced investors seeking to broaden their knowledge base."
–Brett A. Bernstein, Vice President, Zacks Investment Research, Inc.

"What makes this book terrific is that it provides a very thorough and up-to-date treatment of stock analysis, particularly as to stock valuation, that individual investors can easily understand."–Chuck Hill, Director of Research, First Call Corporation

"The authors provide a thorough and comprehensive guide to the do’s and don’ts of stock investing." – Jim Solloway, former Director of Research, Argus Research Corp.

"A comprehensive, nuts-and-bolts book that can meet the needs of novice, experienced, and professional stock market investors. Unlike most books on investing, this book focuses solely on the stock market and, consequently, fills a void in that area." – Isidro A. Diaz-Tous, President, Encor-America, Inc.

China is now among the top hosts for foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in the world. This fact, combined with recent developments in internationalisation and economic growth in China, ensures a perfect opportunity to identify the determinants and impact of FDI in the largest transition economy in the world. Based on the latest official data, this book adopts a panel data approach to the analysis of the national and regional determinants of inward FDI in China and its impact on regional economic growth, labour productivity and international trade. The Chinese evidence shows that FDI, international trade and economic-growth are interrelated. This book will be welcomed by scholars of emerging economies, international business - especially those interested in FDI - and international trade as well as those specialising in the Chinese economy.

All over the world a growing number of people are viewing trading the markets as a valuable source of additional income or even as a new career option. Sitting in front of a PC, they are able to connect to their broker's trading platform and buy or sell on the world market assets of all kinds: gold, oil, shares, bonds, and so forth. Today, it is no longer a problem to "be short" on almost any class of asset. This book is an ideal guide on how to make money by fast trading. It will be especially valuable for those wishing to trade in their spare time with a limited amount of capital. Different styles of trading, including scalping, day trading, and swing trading, are clearly described, with advice on how to avoid common mistakes. In addition, the "Donkey" trading system - a system designed for everybody - is fully explained. Using this book, the reader will learn how to manage risk safely, maximizing the likelihood of success.

There is unrelenting pressure, particularly on taxation authorities in developing and transition countries, to design tax incentives to attract foreign investment. Although experience shows that justification for the use of such incentives can be found only in limited circumstances, policy makers everywhere continue to confer tax benefits on investors in the hopes of achieving various economic objectives. In this widely-researched volume, a leading consultant and academic in the field of international taxation surveys the major forms of FDI tax incentives in theory and in practice. Although it is not intended as a design guide for national taxation authorities, the books scope and depth make it an indispensable source of comparative analysis, showing where efficiency and cost-effectiveness are most likely to lie in a wide range of economic situations. It is particularly valuable in its discussion of the following issues: Avoiding the race to the bottom that comes from excessive tax competition;The elusive distinction in many countries between standard and special tax rates;The perceived benefits of FDI for the various stakeholders;Locational determinants;Risk factors;Distortionary effects;Sectoral competition; andAdministrative monitoring of compliance. Professor Easson draws on numerous actual patterns that arise in various national, supranational, and sectoral contexts, in each instance shedding light on real conflicts and constraints, and clarifying the choices required of investors, taxation authorities, and target enterprises. Tax Incentives for Direct Investment will clearly be of great use to government policymakers, students of international taxation and international business, and those who determine and advise on the policies of multinational corporations and other international investors.