Portfolio Management with Heuristic Optimization consist of two parts. The first part (Foundations) deals with the foundations of portfolio optimization, its assumptions, approaches and the limitations when "traditional" optimization techniques are to be applied. In addition, the basic concepts of several heuristic optimization techniques are presented along with examples of how to implement them for financial optimization problems. The second part (Applications and Contributions) consists of five chapters, covering different problems in financial optimization: the effects of (linear, proportional and combined) transaction costs together with integer constraints and limitations on the initital endowment to be invested; the diversification in small portfolios; the effect of cardinality constraints on the Markowitz efficient line; the effects (and hidden risks) of Value-at-Risk when used the relevant risk constraint; the problem factor selection for the Arbitrage Pricing Theory.

The papers in this volume cover three major areas of International Business: Developments in Theory, The Foreign Market Servicing Strategies of Multinational Firms and Asia-Pacific Issues. The theory section examines the internationalisation process, the role of management in international business theory, approaches to Japanese foreign direct investment and the contrast between the approach taken to international business by internalisation theorists and that of international strategic management. The choices between exporting, foreign licensing of technology and direct investment abroad are examined in Part II. The foreign market servicing decisions are examined both at the level of the firm and in aggregate at the level of an economy (the UK). The impact of these decisions on competitiveness is evaluated and the role of international joint ventures is examined for the case of the UK. The final section examines current issues in the Asia-Pacific economies. The impact of the Single European Market on Pacific Futures and Government-Business relations (Japan versus UK) are the focus of attention and the taxation implications of joint ventures in China are examined in detail.

This book addresses many of the issues which arise in the funding and settlement of cross-border financial transactions, covering a broad spectrum of the international finance issues encountered in global business operations.

Global and regional capital markets are becoming increasingly important. Accounting differences in reporting financial information, and innovations in these financial markets, are examined. Theoretical issues in international finance are addressed by applying a neural network model to the effects of foreign exchange rates, using cluster analysis and Chernoff's faces to explain historical mutual fund performance, and examining the impact of asymmetric information in trade balance announcements on prices of financial assets.

Portfolio investment and foreign direct investment are addressed by examining the diversification benefits of reducing risk and enhancing return in selected Latin American capital markets, and the role of various firm-, industry- and country-specific variables which influence the entry mode in foreign markets through foreign direct investment.

Foreign exchange, futures, equity and debt markets are explored, including a strategy of borrowing in low interest rate countries and lending in high interest rate countries, foreign exchange issues affecting intra-firm cross-border trade, the risk and return of emerging-market debts relative to emerging-market equities, and the socio-ethical and economic effects of international debt in developing economies.

Studies devoted to national issues include an analysis of foreign direct investment in the United States and a study of the financial ratio distribution of Japanese firms.

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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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."

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.

It was an inconceivable deception: over $65 billion stolen in the world's largest Ponzi scheme. With new and revealing interviews with those who worked closest to him and his family, "Betrayal" is an in-depth, penetrating look at the man who perpetrated history's most notorious financial crime. Despite the crush of media attention on Madoff's scam, little is known about Madoff himself. What could lead a seemingly good man to ruin the lives of everyone who ever cared about him? What caused Bernie Madoff to commit an unspeakable act of betrayal, bankrupting his family, his friends, his mentors, and thousands of investors who depended upon him for their livelihoods? "Betrayal: The Life and Lies of Bernie Madoff" is about the man who realised that he could have everything he wanted if he simply lied to the people who trusted him the most. Author Andrew Kirtzman tracked down more than a hundred people from Madoff's past, poured over thousands of pages of court records; private e-mails; phone-conversation transcripts; and, census, military, and immigration records. The result is a fascinating story about the rise of a deeply immoral man.

Financial risk management has become increasingly important in the last years and a profound understanding of this subject is vital for managers, practitioners, investors and students of finance and related areas. This book provides the major trends regarding research on financial risk management, as well as the practices of different countries and economies. It is a compilation of the state of the art, new trends, and theoretical and empirical studies on the domain of enterprise risk. It is a critical reference source that discusses the financial instruments firms use to manage the different kind of financial risks, such as interest rate risk, corporate risk, credit risk, liquidity, and default risk. This book focuses on international risk management practices, and its relationship to firms' performance, and other dimensions of companies. It will present research on topics such as several types of financial risk, management of risk, hedging strategies, corporate governance and risk management, and behavioral finance and risk, and more. It is ideal for regulatory authorities, accountants, managers, academics, students, and researchers seeking coverage on the theoretical, empirical, and experimental studies that relate to the different themes in these global subjects.

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.

Born in Massachusetts, Jared Bibler relocated to Iceland in 2004 only to find himself in the middle of an unprecedented financial crisis a handful of years later. Personally wiped out and seeking to uncover the truth about a collapse that brought the pastoral country to its knees, he became the lead investigator into some of the largest financial crimes in the world. This work helped Iceland to famously become the only country to jail its bank CEOs in the wake of the 2008 crisis. But the real story behind that headline is far more complex - and sinister. A decade after the investigations, the story can be told at last and in full. The crisis, barely understood inside or outside of Iceland even today, is a cautionary tale for the world: an inside look at the high crimes that inevitably follow Wild West capitalism. With the next global financial meltdown just around the corner, this untold tale is as timely as ever.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.