Customer Reviews

Financial Risk Manager Handbook 2001-2002 (Wiley Finance)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

It is the worst book I have ever seen.
I passed both CFA and AICPA and familarize with those materials. I still find it difficult to follow. Not clear explaination, contradiction among arguments and wrong answers for the sample questions.
I am very disappointed.

I bought this book to write the FRM exam. It is the worst possible written book that I have ever seen. Even the topics that I have a very good knowledge of (e.g. Duration, Convexity etc.) are written in such a disjointed fashion that I could not recognise them. The author uses symbols without describing them, the passages have no relevance to the examples which in turn cannot be connected to the solutions. It was a great disappointment. I wonder if anybody at GARP ever reviewed it before recommending it as a text for the FRM exam.

Very interesting to see that the most ratings for the Jorion book are either 5 stars or 1 star. I have no idea why one should rate this book with 5 stars - but so many reasons why to rate it with one star:

- it is full of errors
- it is written in a very strange and unstructured fashion
- it is difficult to read
- Explanations are poor
- the layout is horrible (the 80ies do-it-yourself desktop publishing style)

Unfortunately, this is the major book for the FRM exam - some questions will relate to some irrelevant footnotes from the Jorion book for sure.... So a lot of people studying for the exam will continue to waste a lot of time with this book....

Once upon a time, a guy called Phillipe J. wrote a book about Value at Risk at exactly the right moment and became famous. Since then, people like to ask him to hold presentations at conferences (his charts there have the same quality as the charts in the book, his presentation techniques are extremely disappointing), they like to publish his papers (well, probably comparable to the quality of the book), they like to ask him to be on the board for important exams like the FRM exam. Probably this was all too much...

It is the worst risk management book I have ever read. Poor organization and explanation, make the matter difficult to be understood. It is a very disappointing book suggested by GARP. I am a CFA charter, I have good knowledge in most of the subjects, I still think difficult in reading this book because of its poor explanation.

Is there anything less than 1 star? For the errors, this book is not a good value for your money

I agree with other readers. Book is full of errors and irony is most of these errors are not corrected in the downloadable supplement - available on GARP web-site. Agreed the book covers everything within the Body of Knowledge for FRM exam, but many important issues / theories are mentioned / covered in the Handbook because they are part of syllabus but sufficient justice is not done to them. One definately gets this strong feeling that continuity is missing in certain parts of the book and they seem to be just product of simple copy / paste action.

I strongly recommend GARP, Wiley Finance to correct the errors and replace current book with an error free version. Why should the readers pay for the errors? And please let the readers know what actions you are taking and when?

As comparing with some other exam-oriented books for CFA and AICPA exam., it would be the most poor book I have read up to now. The book is poorly prepared and organized. While it is organized in according with the exam. structure, it is still difficult for the reader to follow. Most concepts have insufficient explanation. While some notations have not been clearly explained, some topics are explained (or jumped) very fast without proper elaboration. Some examples are even not supported by adequate reading before the examples and the explanation can only be found in the answers. Thus, it has made a chapter in pieces and then becomes difficult for the reader to memorize. I doubt why GARP recommend it to the candidates since 2000 and whether it is suitable and sufficient for exam. preparation purposes. I suggest some serious candidates may be required to refer to other textbooks and even myself has such planning.

Many reviewers have commend that this book is poor in organization and explanation, I don't want to repeat. But one thing I would like to remind the potential buyers that this book includes all the past exam questions of FRM. I believe that it is the only attractive point of this book.
But the explanation of the answers of the past questions are also not very good.

It is the worst risk management book I have ever read. Poor organization and explanation, make the matter difficult to be understood. It is a very disappointing book suggested by GARP. I am a CFA charter, I have good knowledge in most of the subjects, I still think difficult in reading this book because of its poor explanation.

The errors in the sample test questions (and answers) need to be fixed! And since the sample test question came from GARP, then GARP should get on the stick and appoint someone in their org to fix 'em.

If the errors had not been present, I'd have given it 5 stars. Book does a good job at taking the reader from start to finish across many different aspects of risk management, and in a very organized way. Not at an extremely quantitative level of depth, but enough so that you know about the big picture (risk-wise) regarding bonds, equities, commodities, credit risk, market risk, ops risk, regs, etc. I encourage all middle office trade analysis personnel to read this book from cover to cover, and to go for the GARP cert.

I will use it as a reference, I'm sure.

Briefly, The essence of this book is Talyor series.
Many authors tried to explan bond with Talyor series, but failed to teaching reader well.
But Jorion complemented that with just 30 pages.
Also the book is writed systematically and well organized.
With this book, I passed FRM exam very high score.
I hope you will be luck enough to read this book.