A Foreign Exchange Primer (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Shani Beverly Shamah (Author) "Foreign exchange is the medium through which international debt is both valued and settled..." (more)
Key Phrases: forward outright rate, forward pips, swap pips, Foreign Exchange Primer, Limited Source, Bretton Woods (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The foreign exchange market is the largest market in the world, with an estimated $1.6 trillion average daily turnover. This book sets out to introduce the novice to the practical skills necessary to understand the foreign exchange market today.

Foreign Exchange Primer provides a clear understanding of how this market functions, from the main products through to the techniques used, coverage of the main participants, details of the various 'players' and an understanding of the 'jargon' used in everyday dealings.

This concise and highly accessible primer, is ideal for anyone new to or wanting to become involved in the foreign exchange market, from a dealing room or sales perspective through to the novice investor.

From the Back Cover

The foreign exchange market is the largest market in the world, with an estimated $1.6 trillion average daily turnover. This book sets out to introduce the novice to the practical skills necessary to understand the foreign exchange market today.

Foreign Exchange Primer provides a clear understanding of how this market functions, from the main products through to the techniques used, coverage of the main participants, details of the various 'players' and an understanding of the 'jargon' used in everyday dealings.

This concise and highly accessible primer, is ideal for anyone new to or wanting to become involved in the foreign exchange market, from a dealing room or sales perspective through to the novice investor.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (April 24, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470851627
• ISBN-13: 978-0470851623
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #914,661 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The perfect forex primer!, June 15, 2003

By A Customer

Although this book is primarily written for people that are clueless about foreign exchange (FX), it will actually teach the clued-up a thing or two also. The broad range of topics covered is what you'd expect to find in a book that is considerably thicker and more expensive - there's a detailed insight into the marketplace and its participants, the products (spot, forwards, swaps, options), fundamental vs. technical analysis, and more. The author writes in a concise, but extremely readable style and makes extensive use of pictures and diagrams. Furthermore, the book is bang up to date with recent developments in FX, such as the Euro and electronic dealing (that is, at the time I wrote this review). Finally, as an added bonus, this book is not overly biased towards the US or the US dollar, which I feel is especially appropriate for an FX book. Highly recommended!

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great for the clueless but not for the pros, May 2, 2006

By	schwarzwald "peripatetic hacker" (San Diego, California United States) - See all my reviews

As another reviewer noted, this book is definitely not for people who are ready to study "financial engineering". It is, however, PERFECT for people who want to learn about foreign exchange but don't have a finance background. It does not TRY to be a book for rocket scientists, so criticizing it for that is unfair. More advanced books that have lots of integral and summation signs assume that you already understand the basic information in this book.

This is the only book I have found which explains this important market at a level that practically anyone can understand. I'm a math student doing a mathematical modelling project involving finance and investment and so I needed something like this: I do not know anyone who invests and the simple fact is that most people don't know much about the mechanics of the markets. This book fills in a gap in plain English with little verbosity or unnecessary digressions. Thus, as a basis for gaining intuition and domain knowledge in an undergraduate university project, this book is everything it attempts to be.

22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A poor text book, March 19, 2004

By	a student in financial engineering "xushi28" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This book does not help me much with my foreign exchange course as a financial engineering student.

Many examples in the book have obvious numeric errors. Also it does not talk about any logic behind the calculation. The little calculation it has is neither rigorous nor complete. Reading this book only caused me more questions and confusions. I had to read other books as a correction or supplement.

It's definitely not for people looking for mathematical reasoning. It does not even talk about Garman-Kohlhagen formula, or Spot-Forward parity etc. It only has some explanations of some jargons, even those explanations are not very well presented.

Another thing I don't like is that at several places two consecutive paragraphs are identical except for a few keywords -- an obvious result of copy & paste.

Had I known the content of the book, I would not have bought it! I bought the e-book & didn't know the content until after I bought it. And e-books cannot be returned. Otherwise I would have done it!