Customer Reviews

Fundamentals of Futures and Options Markets (4th Edition)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I am a student who happens to have read both John Hull's 'Options, Futures and Other Derivatives' and his 'Fundamentals'. To say that 'Options, Futures and Other Derivatives' is a good book is a great understatement, and can even be considered an insult. Yet, this book, which is targeted at readers who are not as acquainted with derivatives fails to impress. Through out the book you can feel how John Hull struggles to explain things in a simple manner. Sadly, his efforts have failed, and this is most evident when my fellow classmates had a hard time understanding the materials starting from Swaps. When we reached the section on options pricing, the book lacks the rigorous math that is needed for students to fully appreciate the beauty of deriving things like Black-Scholes. Overall, if you are a beginner, go straight to 'Options, Futures, and Derivatives'. This book is not worth wasting time over.

By games I mean the fact that the answers to about a third of the questions are found in a solutions manual that, last time I looked (in early Sept '07), was unavailable for purchase. The answers to another third of the questions are not to be found anywhere. The answers to the last third of the questions are in the book--but these questions are not very interesting or challenging. Why must we play this game? Why not just put all the answers in the back of the book? (I know, I know: it's all about the money, etc. But still . . .)

As for the content of the book, I'm told that this isn't Hull's authoritative book (that would be 'Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives'). I feel like a sucker for having bought it. Is it good to make your customer's feel like suckers, Mr. Hull?

I needed to understand everything I could about Futures and Options in a short time and this book was perfect for that purpose. The introduction about futures and options is great and the content in general is very easy to understand and follow. I really liked the examples and the way the author explained each topic. However, I have to confess that maybe my engineering background helped me to understand the math behind, but I believe that even if you don't have much mathematical knowledge you can follow the book.

A big plus of this book is that it contains a chapter about Value at Risk and one focused more on more recent types of derivatives contracts (e.g., energy, weather, etc.).

In general, I think that with this book you could cover more ground more quickly than with other books.

The book is a good book IF you know your math. It has been a while since I have done calculus and finance classes and needed to review other books in order to understand all the math. I laughed at the introduction when the author stated math is not needed. While this is partially true, it is because the author expects the reader to memorize his formulas and so omitts some of the steps of how the formulas come about. Do not try to do this book without help or even better yet, without the solution manual. It was a grueling class with more than 1/2 the class dropping it because the book was so hard to understand.

As promised this book contains no calculus.However it looks more like a formula sheet.There are some typos in some important parts.The intuitive explanations for some important topics are omitted or not well explained.Solutions manual is just a waste of time.Actually the book doesn't contain good questions at all.Despite the fact that it's one of the most used textbooks for the entry level in options and futures it's really not worth the money.One can find online lecture notes and do with them without having to pay that much money.

This book does a great job at clearly teaching the basics of forwards/futures and options markets. While there are a handful of summary questions at the end of each chapter that have answers in the back of the book, the overwhelming majority of answers to the end of chapter practice problems are not. In order to use this book properly and get the most out of it, the study guide is a necessity. Other than that, it's a great textbook.

This book is a great introduction to options and futures, I do not have any university experience in mathematics and was able to follow nearly all that I have read so far. However, if you are not comfortable with substituting into equations and following equation derivations, maybe option/futures trading is not for you.

it's quite good for such a price and worth it. There are quite a lot notes on the book, but to overall it is good.

the book is OK, however, it is a little bit expensive. And the price changed after I bought the book a few days later.

Even though my professor didn't use the book as much as I expected, the content of this one were merely boring lectures explained the reason why my school changed the book after this semester.