Probabilistic and percentile/quantile functions play an important role in several applications, such as finance (Value-at-Risk), nuclear safety, and the environment. Recently, significant advances have been made in sensitivity analysis and optimization of probabilistic functions, which is the basis for construction of new efficient approaches. This book presents the state of the art in the theory of optimization of probabilistic functions and several engineering and finance applications, including material flow systems, production planning, Value-at-Risk, asset and liability management, and optimal trading strategies for financial derivatives (options). Audience: The book is a valuable source of information for faculty, students, researchers, and practitioners in financial engineering, operation research, optimization, computer science, and related areas.

A unique new approach to trading based on financial analysis and financial astrology

"Timing Solutions for Swing Traders: Successful Trading Using Technical Analysis and Financial Astrology" is a remarkable new book that introduces a revolutionary approach to non-day trading that combines the four basic dimensions of trend analysis--price patterns, volume, price momentum, and price moving averages--with a little financial astrology. Focusing on the essentials of technical analysis, the book is filled with examples of reliable indicators and formulas that traders can use to help develop their own styles of trading, specially tailored to their individual needs and interests.

Filled with real-life market examples to help you understand how to use the matrix of moving averages, how to apply different sets of time frame moving averages to form a trading decision, and how to determine the intermediate state of the market using the Queuing Theory (QMAC)--which dissects the interplay of long-term moving averages and helps anticipate major support and resistance levels--this book is packed with the information you need to maximize your trading potential.A dedicated trading guide for non-day tradersIncorporates examples and formulas to bring ideas to lifePresents an innovative new approach to trading that draws on the four core dimensions--price patterns, volume, price momentum, and price moving averages--for analyzing trends

Innovative and practical, "Timing Solutions for Swing Traders" is a hands-on guide to applying a remarkable new approach to trading.

1,001 opportunities to practice for the Series 7 Exam

This comprehensive study guide takes you beyond the instruction offered in "Series 7 Exam For Dummies," by giving you more practice and review of the major concepts covered in the exam. If you're prepping to take this intense six-hour exam, "1,001 Series 7 Exam Practice Questions For Dummies (+ Free Online Practice)" covers stocks, municipal and corporate bonds, and options--plus rules for acquiring customers and handling accounts and everything else you can expect to encounter on exam day

With the purchase of the book, you'll also get a free one-year subscription to online content that includes all the practice problems categorized as easy, medium, and hard and presented in customizable sets for self-directed study. You'll also have on-the-go access from your smart phone, computer, or tablet. Everything you need to score higher on the Series 7 Exam is at your fingertips Gives you 1,001 practice opportunities to prepare for the Series 7 ExamExplains each question by providing a detailed, step-by-step solutionIncludes a free one-year subscription to access practice problems and additional content online

If you're an aspiring financial professional, you'll find all the practice and helpful guidance you need to succeed

Energy Price Risk is the practitioner's guide to optimizing company performance using the correct price risk strategies and tools. Based on the author's extensive experience in the commodity derivatives industry, it comprehensively covers the full spectrum of the energy complex, including crude oil, petroleum products, natural gas, LPG/LNG, and electricity. Using many worked examples, this book offers practical insights and solutions.

The analysis of investment decisions today draws upon a wide range of sources, from economics and finance to engineering economy and operations research. Dr. Beenhakker's book reflects this interdisciplinary approach, and without assuming prior knowledge of these fields or a sophisticated understanding of mathematics, provides professionals and upper-level students with the concepts and tools they need to make englightened investments in new ventures. Arranged to permit rapid review of an entire investment subject and written in a modular manner to allow readers to jump among chapters without losing their bearings, the book will help business managers deal intelligently with corporate financial and economic issues and government contracts. It will also help planners of the public sector incorporate the views of private industry in their own investment decision making. A unique, readable, comprehensive treatment for investment professionals and also for academics and their graduate-level students.

The analysis of investment decisions today draws upon a wide range of sources, from economics and finance to engineering economy and operations research. Dr. Beenhakker's book reflects this interdisciplinary approach, and without assuming prior knowledge of these fields or a sophisticated understanding of mathematics, provides professionals and upper-level students with the concepts and tools they need to make enlightened investments in new ventures. Arranged to permit rapid review of an entire investment subject and written in a modular manner to allow readers to jump among chapters without losing their bearings, the book will help business managers deal intelligently with corporate financial and economic issues and government contracts. It will also help planners of the public sector incorporate the views of private industry in their own investment decision making. A unique, readable, comprehensive treatment for investment professionals and also for academics and their graduate-level students.

Dr. Beenhakker begins with a study of financial statements and ratios, and covers annual reports, balance sheets, income and retained earnings statements, cash flow statements, and financial ratios. In Chapter 2 he looks at the valuation and investment problems when shares are under- or overvalued. He moves then to derivative securities, and in Chapter 4 to a discussion of diversification planning. In Chapter 5 he takes up the cost of capital, with special attention to risk, uncertainty, and certainty, and in Chapter 6 covers that and other topics in the context of project appraisal. Chapter 7 digs into programming and planning and covers topics such as the marginal cost of capital in capital budgeting, the optimal capital budget, capital rationing, and economic development plans. The book ends with a discussion of cost minimization problems, such as leasing and purchasing, replacement investments, expansion investments, decision trees, and the problem of how to ship quantities from supply to demand centers such that the total cost of transport is minimized. Five appendices provide readers with various tables and formulas to assist in their own calculations.

"One of the best books I have read on investing in years. " -Bill Ackman, founder and CEO, Pershing Square Capital Management From a successful investor and a contributor to Barron's and Fortune comes a once-in-a-lifetime book that gives modern investors what they need most: a fresh guide to making money in a stock market now dominated by tech stocks. Technological change is reshaping the economy in a way not witnessed since Henry Ford introduced the assembly line. A little more than ten years ago, only two of the ten most valuable publicly traded companies in the world were digital enterprises-today, they comprise eight of the top ten. Investors around the world are struggling to understand the Digital Age and how they can use the stock market to profit from it. Author Adam Seessel understands. Several years ago, he watched his old-school portfolio built using traditional value investing principles decline while the market, driven by "expensive" tech stocks, advanced. Determined to reverse course, he set off in search of a new investment paradigm, one that remained true to the discipline that Ben Graham gave us a century ago while reflecting the new realities of the Digital Age. In this "helpful take on playing the stock market" (Publishers Weekly), Seessel introduces a refreshed value-based framework that any investor, professional or amateur, can use to beat the modern market. Like all sectors, the tech sector follows certain rules. We can study these rules, understand them, and invest accordingly. The world is changing, and we can profit from it. Approaching tech this way, the economy's current changes and the rapid rise of tech stocks are not reasons to be frightened or disoriented-they're reasons to be excited. Infused with the same kind of optimism and common sense that inspired Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor and Peter Lynch's One Up on Wall Street, Where the Money Is ushers in a new era of modern value investing.

Eschewing a more theoretical approach, Portfolio Optimization shows how the mathematical tools of linear algebra and optimization can quickly and clearly formulate important ideas on the subject. This practical book extends the concepts of the Markowitz "budget constraint only" model to a linearly constrained model.

Only requiring elementary linear algebra, the text begins with the necessary and sufficient conditions for optimal quadratic minimization that is subject to linear equality constraints. It then develops the key properties of the efficient frontier, extends the results to problems with a risk-free asset, and presents Sharpe ratios and implied risk-free rates. After focusing on quadratic programming, the author discusses a constrained portfolio optimization problem and uses an algorithm to determine the entire (constrained) efficient frontier, its corner portfolios, the piecewise linear expected returns, and the piecewise quadratic variances. The final chapter illustrates infinitely many implied risk returns for certain market portfolios.

Drawing on the author 's experiences in the academic world and as a consultant to many financial institutions, this text provides a hands-on foundation in portfolio optimization. Although the author clearly describes how to implement each technique by hand, he includes several MATLAB programs designed to implement the methods and offers these programs on the accompanying CD-ROM.

The advent of new stock markets (the German Neuer Markt, the French Nouveau March??, the Italian Nuovo Mercato and Nasdaq Europe) has been one of the most important reforms of stock exchanges in Continental Europe in the 1990s. These stock markets aimed at attracting early stage, innovative and high-growth firms that would not have been viable candidates for public equity financing on the main markets of European stock exchanges. Of these new markets, the Neuer Markt emerged as Europe's answer to NASDAQ. However, Europe's new stock markets met with only limited success. Stock prices plummeted after the ending of the stock market bubble and new markets suffered from poor liquidity, insider trading scandals and accounting frauds. This volume provides an overview of the rise and fall of Europe's new stock markets. It contains twelve papers which investigate the characteristics, the ownership structure and the market performance of companies in the short and long run, In addition this volume examines the role of venture capitalists. New stock markets offered venture capitalists an attractive exit for their investments and helped to create a more vibrant venture capital industry in Europe. The private equity market in Europe today is as large as it was just before the advent of new stock markets. As such, the need for stock markets that allow private equity investors to divest their equity stakes in growth companies continues to exist.

With the relaxation of capital controls in a large number of developed and developing countries and the globalization of capital markets, economies of emerging markets have attracted a great deal of attention. The objective of this book is to better understand the economic characteristics and shortcomings of emerging markets and provide a discussion of some of the policies which may have to be adopted in conjunction with financial reforms in developing countries in order to reduce the risk of another financial crisis. The book includes case study material.

The taxation of equity derivatives and financial products is analyzed in detail by Tony Rumble and his contributors, Mohammed Amin and Ed Kleinbard. The book covers the financial and tax technical analysis of issues relating to equity derivatives and financial products. Part I examines the derivatives building blocks and financial market/corporate finance drivers of the equity derivatives and financial products market, and includes case studies of typical and landmark transactions. Part II looks at the tax technical rules in each of the target countries and examines the specific products highlighted in the first part of the book.

Since financial myths exploded in the 1980s, the perspective of time creates a unique opportunity to update and expand the analysis begun in Glenn Yagos 1991 book, Junk Bonds: How High Yield Securities Restructured Corporate America (Oxford University Press). At the time of its publication, Junk Bonds drew controversial responses from the Federal Reserve and government agencies. In retrospect, the evidence clearly casts favorable light on the role of high yield securities. The research presented here demonstrates how financial innovations enabled capital access for industrial restructuring, capital and labor productivity gains, and improved global competitiveness. Enough time has now passed to allow this dispassionate empirical analysis to shear away the hype and hysteria that surrounded the Wall Street scandals, Washington controversies, and media frenzy of the time.

Beyond Junk Bonds provides a one-stop data, reference and case study presentation of the firms and securities in the contemporary high yield market and the financial innovations that spurred growth in the nineties and will continue to finance the future. The high yield market incubated successive waves of financial technologies that now proliferate beyond junk bonds to all the dimensions and dynamics of global debt and equity capital markets. It charts the recovery of the market in the 1990s, the recent wave of fallen angels, distressed credits and defaults, and suggests how the high yield market will be recreated in the global market of the 21st century. It explicates the linkages between the high yield market, and other credit and equity markets in managing a firms capital structure to execute its business strategy. The weakening of the U. S. economy in 2001 and the huge shock to Wall Street from the terrorist attacks of September 11 witnessed a historic increase in the yield to maturity of high yield bonds. Despite the volatility in the flow of funds to high yield mutual funds and occasionally sharp increases in non-investment grade debt yields, the asset class has been one of the best performing fixed income investments of the past decades. In fact, high yield bonds offer an attractive risk-reward ratio competitive with more traditional asset classes.

Anyone active in corporate finance, financial institutions and capital markets will find this book a must read for interpreting and understanding the recent history both of the high yield marketplace and its interaction with private equity, public equity, and fixed income markets. This new perspective recalling the ten years after the explosion of financial myths in the 1980's offers a unique opportunity to update and continue the arguments that were presented in Glen Yago's 1991 book, Junk Bonds: How High Yield Securities Restructured Corporate America. Beyond Junk Bonds provides a comprehensive presentation of the firms and securities represented in the high yield market. In addition, there are examples of the firms and institutions who are benefitting from the "new cycle", both in the US and abroad.

From local coffee shops to the largest Fortune 500 companies, everyone is struggling to make the impossible choice between chasing short-term objectives and creating a secure future for their company. David Cote understood this dilemma and rejected it. In these pages, he shows you how taking the same revolutionary approach might be the smartest business decision you'll ever make. This book reveals the bold the operational reforms and counterintuitive leadership practices you can put into practice that will allow you to do two conflicting things at the same time-pursue strong short- and long-term results. This tested and proven approach can strengthen your business like never before, and even rescue it from the brink of disaster no matter how dire the current circumstances may seem. In Winning Now, Winning Later, Cote shares 10 essential principles for winning today and tomorrow such as: Spot practices that seem attractive in the short term but will cost the company in the future Determine where and how to invest in growth for maximum impact Sustain both short-term performance and long-term investments even in challenging times, such as during recessions and leadership transitions Feel inspired to stand up to investors and other managers who are solely focused on either short- or long-term objectives Step back, think independently, and foster independent thinking among others around you Presenting a comprehensive solution to a perennial problem, Winning Now, Winning Later is a go-to guide for you and leaders everywhere to finally transcend short-termism's daily grind and leave an enduring legacy of success.

* Covers a wide array of behavioural finance topics, including a rich selection of academic research, as well as theory drawn from established and emerging areas * Very accessible writing style helps students who are not finance specialists understand the concepts, while still retaining the attention of those with more in-depth knowledge * Experiential examples and end-of-chapter questions help students test their understanding * New content on fintech and cryptocurrencies, the role of social media in investing, generational biases, and the covid-19 pandemic * A dedicated chapter on the physiology of investment explores the latest research from genetics and neuroscience in informing investment behaviour, with new content on generational biases * More international examples, including from Asia and Africa, increasing the book's relevance for globally focused behavioural finance courses * Online supplements comprising student quizzes and an instructor manual and slides for lecturers.

A unique, authoritative, and comprehensive treatment of fixed income markets Fixed Income Trading and Risk Management: The Complete Guide delivers a comprehensive and innovative exposition of fixed income markets. Written by European Central Bank portfolio manager Alexander During, this book takes a practical view of how several different national fixed income markets operate in detail. The book presents common theoretical models but adds a lot of information on the actually observed behavior of real markets. You'll benefit from the book's: Fulsome overview of money, credit, and monetary policy Description of cash instruments, inflation-linked debt, and credit claims Analysis of derivative instruments, standard trading strategies, and data analysis In-depth focus on risk management in fixed income markets Perfect for new and junior staff in financial institutions working in sales and trading, risk management, back office operations, and portfolio management positions, Fixed Income Trading and Risk Management also belongs on the bookshelves of research analysts and postgraduate students in finance, economics, or MBA programs.

Have you ever wondered how the top City traders make big profits from share trading? Do you know why the best investors know exactly when the market is going to rise or fall? And do you wish you could do the same?

By following 20 hard and fast rules, "Trading Secrets" shows you how you can make the same high returns as experienced investors and traders. Using historical, economic and technical trend analysis from the last fifty years, it identifies the ways for you to capitalise on such events as the clocks going back or moving forward, religious holidays, major sporting events and even the US presidential election.

Written for both experienced investors and also those with little knowledge of the stock market, Simon Thompson's practical investing guide offers trading strategies that you can use over the short-term or the long-term. For instance, do you know how daylight changes affect how the stock market performs and, more importantly, how to make big gains by trading on this knowledge? Or do you know which sector has massively outperformed the market in the first quarter of the year - posting a quarterly return of 12 per cent - in all bar four years in the past three decades?

Trading Secrets uncovers all and more importantly explains why these trends occur, so that you can be confident your investments will pay off, even when the market is falling.

Stock market integration between developing and emerging markets has numerous benefits for creating a global - yet stable - world economy. It increases competition and the efficiency of local markets, in turn reducing price volatility and the cost of capital among integrated markets. It also generates capital flows, which enhance financial stability and spur economic growth. At its core, stock market integration has an important role to play in both developing and emerging markets still reeling from the global financial crisis. Global Stock Market Integration analyzes the financial makeup of developing and emerging markets around the world, providing empirical insights into market integration, co-movements in price, crises, and efficiency linkages. Mobarek and Mollah argue that the relationship between market integration and market efficiency within developing and emerging countries is not the only measure necessary for effecting real financial growth. This work brings the review of theories and empirical research on the topic up-to-date and expands the existing literature with new perspectives on developed and emerging markets.

In 1940 few Americans had heard of mutual funds. Today U.S. mutual funds are the largest financial industry in the world, with over 88 million shareholders and over $11 trillion in assets. Cottage Industry to Financial Giant describes the developments that have produced mutual funds' long history of success. Among these developments are: * formation of the first mutual funds in the roaring 20s * how the 1929 stock market crash, a disaster for most financial institutions, spurred the growth of mutual funds * establishment in 1934, over FDR's objection, of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, the federal agency that regulates mutual funds * enactment of the Revenue Act of 1936, the tax law that saved mutual funds from extinction * passage of the Investment Company Act of 1940, the "constitution" of the mutual fund industry * the creation in 1972 of money market funds, which totally changed the mutual fund industry and the entire U.S. financial system *enactment of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, which created Individual Retirement Accounts * the accidental development of 401(k) plans, which have revolutionized the way Americans save for retirement * the 2003 trading abuses, the greatest scandal ever in the history of the mutual fund industry Many events have never been reported before. Others have been discussed in works on other subjects such as retirement plans. Thus, this is first book that pulls together the many strands of mutual funds' unique history. Moreover, the author was personally involved in developments over the past forty years, and much of the book is a personal narrative regarding the people and events that have produced mutual funds' success.