Traders, Guns and Money, 3rd Edition

Traders, Guns and Money, 3rd Edition

by Satyajit Das
Released July 2020
Publisher(s): Pearson Education
ISBN: 9781292362960

Read it now on the O’Reilly learning platform with a 10-day free trial.

O’Reilly members get unlimited access to books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial

Book description

Traders Guns and Money is a wickedly comic exposé of the culture, games and pure deceptions played out every day in trading rooms around the world. And played out with other people’s money.

A sensational insider’s view of the business of trading and marketing derivatives, this revised edition explains the frighteningly central role that derivatives and financial products played in the global financial crisis.

This worldwide bestseller reveals the truth about derivatives: those financial tools memorably described by Warren Buffett as ‘financial weapons of mass destruction’. Traders, Guns and Money will introduce you to the players and the practices and reveals how the real money is made and lost.

The global financial crisis took almost everyone by surprise and even now new problems keep appearing and solutions continue to be elusive. In the original version of Traders, Guns and Money, Satyajit Das provided a highly prescient insight into the structure and risk of the world financial system exposing the problems that are becoming readily apparent. In a 2006 speech – The Coming Credit Crash – Das argued that: an informed analysis … shows that risk is not better spread but more leveraged and (arguably) more concentrated…. This does not improve the overall stability and security of the financial system but exposes it to increased risk of a crash.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title page
  3. Contents
  4. Publisher’s acknowledgements
  5. List of figures and tables
  6. About the author
  7. Introduction to the paperback edition
  8. PROLOGUE
    1. Miracles and mirages
    2. Serial crimes
    3. Beginning of the end/end of the beginning
    4. Knowns and unknowns
    5. Unreliable recollections
    6. Summary judgment
  9. 1 FINANCIAL WMDS – DERIVATIVES DEMAGOGUERY
    1. School days
    2. It’s all Chinese to me
    3. A derivative idea
    4. Betting shops
    5. Secret subtexts
    6. Leveraged speculations
    7. Under the radar
    8. Whole lotta swapping going on
    9. The golden age/LIBOR minus 50
    10. Warehouses
    11. Serial killings
    12. Forbidden fruit
    13. Derived logic
  10. 2 BEAUTIFUL LIES – THE ‘SELL’ SIDE
    1. Smile and dial
    2. Market colour
    3. Rough trade
    4. Analyse this
    5. Class wars
    6. Ultra vires
    7. Feudal kingdoms
    8. Uncivil wars
    9. Golden rules
    10. Business models
    11. The medium is the message
    12. Bondage
    13. Tabloid cultures
    14. Conspicuous currency
    15. Ethnic cleansing
    16. Foreign affairs
    17. FILTH
    18. Lost in translation
    19. A day in the life
  11. 3 TRUE LIES – THE ‘BUY’ SIDE
    1. Turn of the fork
    2. Risky business
    3. Magic kingdoms
    4. Stripping or stacking/hedging perils, again
    5. Me too
    6. ’Zaiteku’ or the bride stripped bare
    7. The gamble in P & G
    8. Tobashi, baby
    9. Gnomes of Zermatt and Belgian dentists
    10. Death swaps
    11. Investment fashions
    12. Alpha, beta, zeta
    13. Looking after the relatives
    14. Agents all
    15. Unique selling propositions
  12. 4 SHOW ME THE MONEY – GREED LOST AND REGAINED
    1. Money uncertainty
    2. Toll booths
    3. Take a seat
    4. Efficient markets
    5. On the platform
    6. A day at the races
    7. Black swans, black sheep
    8. Trading places
    9. Secret intelligence
    10. Overwhelming force
    11. Oracle of delphi
    12. Free money
    13. The colour of money
    14. In reserve
    15. A comedy of errors
    16. Black holes
    17. What’s the number?
    18. Nothing like excess
    19. Nice work if you can get it
    20. Dukes of Hazard
  13. 5 THE PERFECT STORM – RISK MISMANAGEMENT BY THE NUMBERS
    1. Shock therapy
    2. Holy risk!
    3. Risk spin
    4. Risqué matters
    5. Placebo effects
    6. Among the unbelievers
    7. Risk cults
    8. In the long run …
    9. Modus operandi
    10. Secret trader’s business
    11. Let the good times roll
    12. The perfect storm
    13. Weather forecasts
    14. Endgame
    15. Mean risk
    16. Extreme sports
  14. 6 SUPER MODELS – DERIVATIVE ALGORITHMS
    1. Out of the sheltered workshops
    2. Rocket science
    3. Culture wars
    4. Conveyor belts
    5. Trivial pursuits
    6. Grand oprey
    7. The quest
    8. Genesis
    9. Gospels
    10. Greek tragedies
    11. Failing the model test
    12. CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) 1987 – ‘Oh, LOR-dy!’
    13. CSI 1992 – ERM (extremely risky, man!)
    14. CSI 1998 – selling England by the pound
    15. CSI 1998 – Asian fever
    16. Model envy
    17. Omitted variable bias
  15. 7 GAMES WITHOUT FRONTIERS – THE INVERSE WORLD OF STRUCTURED PRODUCTS
    1. Driving over lemons
    2. The best of times … the worst of times
    3. Ghostbusters
    4. It wasn’t me, sir
    5. Heaven and hell
    6. Split personality
    7. Golfing holidays
    8. The flood
    9. Power to the people
    10. Recycling junk
    11. Six packs
    12. Take no prisoners
    13. The usual suspects
  16. 8 SHARE AND SHARE ALIKE – DERIVATIVE INEQUITY
    1. Billion dollar baby
    2. Self arbitrage
    3. Arbitraging others
    4. Taking it over
    5. Buying back the farm
    6. Who’s fooling whom?
    7. Strippers
    8. Pearls of wisdom
    9. Own goals
    10. Taxing times
    11. Fund times
  17. 9 CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE – FUN WITH CDS AND CDO
    1. Credit wars
    2. Credit epiphanies
    3. First-to-credit derivatives
    4. Remote credit
    5. Mistaken identity
    6. Heard it on the grapevine
    7. Guaranteed delivery
    8. Re-re-re-re-restructuring – CDS stutters
    9. Beyond the push and pull
    10. Imitation and flattery
    11. Tranche warfare
    12. It’s super
    13. A capital idea
    14. The arbitrage age
    15. Hangovers
    16. UFOs
    17. Geeks with greeks
    18. Never believe your own lies
    19. Russian dolls
    20. Black holes
  18. EPILOGUE
    1. The Asian century redux
    2. Vexatious litigation
    3. The more things change
    4. Hot tubbing
    5. Rogue trader
    6. Bangs and whimpers
    7. The China Club
    8. BOAT (Best of all time)
    9. Knowns and unknowns
  19. AFTERWORD: CREDIT CRUNCH – THE NEW KNOWN KNOWN OF FINANCIAL MARKETS
    1. Living in the Age of Kali…
    2. Supersize my debt!
    3. Would you like debt with that?
    4. The new liquidity factory
    5. Lying NINJA mortgagors
    6. The lines of transmission
    7. It’s different this time!
    8. The bear comes out of hibernation
    9. Waiting for the other shoe to fall …
    10. Financial shell games
    11. The short and long of it all
    12. Model shock
    13. Missing the mark
    14. Truth in labelling
    15. Regulatory irregularities
    16. Reversion to mean
    17. Credit crunch
  20. Notes
  21. Index
  22. Endorsements
  23. Imprint

Product information

  • Title: Traders, Guns and Money, 3rd Edition
  • Author(s): Satyajit Das
  • Release date: July 2020
  • Publisher(s): Pearson Education
  • ISBN: 9781292362960