Customer Reviews

Vault Guide to Advanced Finance & Quantitative Interviews

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

 

 

The book might be good for someone with MBA as a general review but definitelly not for someone preparing for quant job/interview.

For that purpose "Heard on the Street: Quantitative Questions from Wall Street Job Interviews" is at least 100 times better.

I am not quite sure who is supposed to read this book. I am about to finish my M.Sc (Industrial management and engineering) and almost everything (98%) in this book was known to me.

Regarding all the errors, I stopped marking them at about the 20th page. It is really terrible how there can be so many factual errors in one book (by far the worst book I have seen at least). E.g. the part on CAPM where it says that beta must be a nonnegative number.

Please do not buy this book, at least not until the second edition has come out!

If you're preparing for an interview for a job as a "quant," FI/MBS/options trader, or risk manager, then this book is a great review of the subject matter. The chapters review bond math, statistics, derivatives, fixed income, equities, currencies, and risk management. The book focuses exclusively on finance, and not on the structure of the financial industry, typical jobs, or interview skills. However, this isn't a drawback -- there are other Vault guides that cover these areas.

Overall, the book is certainly more technical & mathematical than most interview guides (except perhaps for "Heard on the Street" by Tim Crack at MIT), so be prepared to review the Black-Scholes partial differential equation. Despite the complexity of the subject matter, the author's explanations make the material accessible, and her explanations were pithy, clear, and often accompanied by helpful diagrams. My only complaints are that (1) the book doesn't include any review of accounting, which does come up in finance occasionally, and (2) there are just a few mistakes (but not too many). Overall, I found this book to be well worth the time & money I invested in it.

Considering the academic qualifications of the author, I expected more from this book. I have a finance degree from the top undergrad business program and bought this book to review some topics for an interview. There are some places where the author's explanation takes a leap that is simply hard to follow. In some example problems she works out, there are major errors as the math gets worked out, which ruin the lesson. Because this book is an overview of important finance topics, each example problem is that much more important to the learning value. The errors make it hard to put faith in this book. Hopefully these errors get corrected in future versions, as I feel this book has the potential to be a very good tool.

Hi, thanks for all of the comments. I was not aware that there were many typographical errors and I will go through the book very carefully over the next month so that hopefully soon (Jan 15, 2006 is my target) there will be an errata sheet posted on my website, treasuryfinance.com. Plus, I hope to add some spreadsheets used in the book and even a few new questions. Thanks again. (Sorry, I was forced to add a rating or I would not have been allowed to submit this).

This book is a great review for anyone who has taken finance courses yet may not have retained as much as they would like. I picked up this book after graduating from an MBA program, and found myself saying, "oh yeah, I forgot about that" on many occasions. Overall, it's a keeper that has earned a spot on my professional bookshelf.

I learned some stuff from this book so I don't regret checking it out from our library.
But the editing is just terrible for a book going out to print. Undergrad project reports are better structured than this book. Lots of typos, editing issues, blocks of white pages, etc. -> Nonprofessional
Also at least once I noticed a deep conceptual mistake. (Working in risk neutral measure, and using mu, the risky return of a stock? That's unforgivable!)

an excellent preparation for advanced finance and quantitative interviews. covers a wide range of topics incl. fixed income, equities, statistics and risk management. starting with the very basics until pretty advanced (esp. in derivatives). a good prior knowledge of many subjects is needed, however, since many topcis are with no/little explanation. very readable with good questions (incl. answers). one might have added some quantitative and non-quantitative questions asked in investment banking interviews, but that's just a detail. Excellent book!!