From the award-winning author of "Diamond" A blazing exploration of the human love affair with gold that "combines the engaging style of a travel narrative with sharp-eyed journalistic expose" ("Publishers Weekly," starred review).
In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the price of gold skyrocketed--in three years more than doubling from $800 an ounce to $1900. This massive spike drove an unprecedented global gold-mining and exploration boom, much bigger than the gold rush of the 1800s. In "Gold," acclaimed author Matthew Hart takes you on an unforgettable journey around the world and through history to tell the extraordinary story of how gold became the world's most precious commodity.
Beginning with a page-turning report from the crime-ridden inferno of the world's deepest mine, Hart traveled around the world to the sites of the hottest action in gold today, from the biggest new mine in China, to the highly secretive London gold exchange, and the lair of the world's most powerful gold trader in Geneva, Switzerland. He profiles the leaders of the gold market today, the nature of the current boom, and the likely prospects for the future. From the earliest civilizations, when gold was an icon of sacred and kingly power, Hart tracks its evolution, through conquest, murder, and international mayhem, into the speculative casino-chip that the metal has become. He ends by telling the story of the massive flows of gold that have occurred in the wake of the financial crisis and what the world's leading experts are saying about the profound changes underway in the gold market and the prospects for the future.
"Compelling, stylish, and impressively researched" ("The Boston Globe"), "Gold" is a wonderful historical odyssey with important implications for today's global economy.

In the middle decades of the nineteenth century Jeremiah G. Hamilton was a well-known figure on Wall Street. Cornelius Vanderbilt, America's first tycoon, came to respect, grudgingly, his onetime opponent. The day after Vanderbilt's death on January 4, 1877, an obituary acknowledged that "There was only one man who ever fought the Commodore to the end, and that was Jeremiah Hamilton." Hamilton, although his origins were lowly, possibly slave, was reportedly the richest black man in the United States, possessing a fortune of $2 million, or in excess of two hundred and $50 million in today's currency. In this ground-breaking and vivid account, eminent historian Shane White reveals the larger than life story of a man who defied every convention of his time. He wheeled and dealed in the lily white business world, he married a white woman, he bought a mansion in rural New Jersey, he owned railroad stock on trains he was not legally allowed to ride, and generally set his white contemporaries teeth on edge when he wasn't just plain outsmarting them. An important contribution to American history, the Hamilton's life offers a way into considering, from the unusual perspective of a black man.

The Financial Times Guide to Options, will introduce you to the instruments and markets of options, giving you the confidence to trade successfully. Options are explained in real-life terminology, using every-day examples and accessible language. Introducing three key options markets - stocks, bonds and commodities, the book explains options contracts from straight vanilla options to strangles and butterflies and covers the fundamentals of options pricing and trading Originally published as Options Plain and Simple , this new edition includes: How the options industry operates and how basic strategies have evolved Risk management and how to trade safely Inclusion of new products such as exchange traded funds A glossary of key words and further reading Addition of market scenarios and examples Like all investment strategies, options offer potential return while incurring potential risk. The advantage of options trading is that risk can be managed to a greater degree than with outright buying or selling. The Financial Times Guide to Options is a straightforward and practical introduction to the fundamentals of options. It includes only what is essential to basic understanding and presents options theory in conventional terms, with a minimum of jargon. This thorough guide will give you a basis from which to trade most of the options listed on most of the major exchanges. The Financial Times Guide to Options includes: Options in everyday life The basics of calls The basics of puts Pricing and behaviour Volatility and pricing models The Greeks and risk assessment: delta Gamma and theta Vega Call spreads and put spreads, or one by one directional spreads One by two directional spreads Combos and hybrid spreads for market direction Volatility spreads Combining straddles and strangles for reduced risk Combining call spreads and put spreads The covered write, the calendar spread and the diagonal spread The interaction of the Greeks Options performance based on cost Trouble shooting and common problems Volatility skews Futures, synthetics and put-call parity Conversions, reversals, boxes and options arbitrage

Handbook of Frontier Markets: Evidence from Asia and International Comparative Studies provides novel insights from academic perspectives about the behavior of investors and prices in several frontier markets. It explores finance issues usually reserved for developed and emerging markets in order to gauge whether these issues are relevant and how they manifest themselves in frontier markets. Frontier markets have now become a popular investment class among institutional investors internationally, with major financial services providers establishing index-benchmarks for this market-category. The anticipation for frontier markets is optimistic uncertainty, and many people believe that, given their growth rates, these markets will be economic success stories. Irrespective of their degrees of success, The Handbook of Frontier Markets can help ensure that the increasing international investment diverted to them will aid in their greater integration within the global financial system.