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| Building Financial Derivatives Applications with C++: | 
 enlarge | Author: Robert Brooks
Publisher: Quorum Books
Category: Book
List Price: $125.00
Buy New: $100.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (11 reviews)
Sales Rank: 412481
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 232
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 156720287X
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.645
EAN: 9781567202878
ASIN: 156720287X
Publication Date: March 30, 2000
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Radical developments in financial management, spurred by improvements in computer technology, have created demand for people who can use modern financial techniques combined with computer skills such as C++. Dr. Brooks gives readers the ability to express derivative solutions in an attractive, user-friendly format, and the ability to develop a permanent software package containing them. His book explains in detail how to write C++ source code and at the same time explains derivative valuation problems and methods. Entry level as well as experienced financial professionals have already found that the ability to understand and write C++ code has greatly enhanced their careers. This is an important hands-on training resource for practitioners and a clearly presented textbook for graduate-level students in business and finance. Dr. Brooks combines object-oriented C++ programming with modern derivatives technology and provides numerous examples to illustrate complex derivative applications. He covers C++ within the text and the Borland C++Builder program, on which the book is based, in extensive appendices. His book combines basic C++ coding with fundamental finance problems, illustrates traditional techniques for solving more complicated problems, and develops the reader's ability to express complex mathematical solutions in the object-oriented framework of C++. It also reviews derivative solutions techniques and illustrates them with C++ code, reviews general approaches to valuing interest rate contingent claims, and focuses on practical ways to implement them. The result is a book that trains readers simultaneously in the substance of its field, financial derivatives, and the programming of solutions to problems in it.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 Waste of 120 bucks October 9, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is one of the worst-written programming books I have seen yet. I'm sorry I bought it. It appears to be written by a man who knows quite a bit about finance, and dangerously little about C++ programming. Duffy's review correctly describes the main flaws.
I would add that (1) The book is not structured to build upon OO, GOF Patterns, or STL design principles; (2) The code does not follow even basic C++ coding conventions; (3) The images (screenshots) are agonizingly UNREADABLE; (4) The code listings are in ITALICS using a variable-pitch font [is COURIER font code listing so difficult to include in a $100 book???]; (5) No over-arching component object model is suggested ANYWHERE in the book.
Some of the efforts at brevity are just plain WRONG or even DANGEROUSLY WRONG to teach beginning programmers. For example, Pg 19 Data Types section:
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int - holds integer numbers up to a little over 2 million, for example, "int I = 2000000;."
long - same as int.
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WRONG, PROFESSOR! This is not only a syntactically incorrect example, but a just plain wrong assertion. If the reader does not know how to determine the (platform-specific) size of an "int" or "long", then the author has only served to confuse the matter further!
Furthermore, I consider it a "cheapskate" tactic to ask readers to pay for the code from this book in electronic form (particularly when the book's code listings are so sloppy). That said, I would not use the code, even if it had been supplied for free ... but it *might* have been interesting to have something to play around with...
Have any of the reviewers actually USED any code from this book without substantial refactoring?
The only use I could see for this book is for intermediate-advanced fin-techs, who want to review a few general algorithms for selected derivative calculations (futures, forwards, etc) ... but just be prepared to squint and suffer through reading the code!
 Book to learn how to program derivatives's modeling August 4, 2004
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is very accessible book to learn from. If really want be a quanta this is the book to start with. All quantas entering the field of financial derivatives should start with this book, which includes all you will need to know to program and implement your first derivatives' modeling application.
great book May 22, 2004
1 out of 9 found this review helpful
One of the best books in the market. I enjoyed reading it.
A must book for MBA's/MS in financial engineering March 20, 2004
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book has the contents that a graduate student will look for in a course that covers derivatives application development using C++. Dr. Brooks book is by far the best I have ever scanned for the purpose of finance. For a quant analyst position it is important to understand how to generate various mathematical tools using C++ and the book covers such code in details. The book covers Lattice based solutions through extensive coding of Black Derman and Toy, Monte Carlo simulation, curve fitting techniques and iterative numerical solutions technique .The most attractive part of this book is the simplistic approach to mathematical complexities and Dr. Brooks excels in handling the mathematics and the language. His examples are in Borland C++ so VC or other C users need not be intimidated as the basic C++ principles are the same for any type of proprietary C++ language. In fact Borland is a good way to get introduced to the visual C++ modeling approach at the graduate level, it definitely reduces the entry barrier into coding.
Code Available May 16, 2003
3 out of 8 found this review helpful
If you have shopped around you may be aware that this is one of the only books available that is dedicated to pricing derivatives using C++. Perhaps like me as a student of Pure and Applied Mathematics you have wondered why all those Financial Engineering grad schools are pushing so hard for C++.
You can expect that this book will introduce you to a set of traditional algorithms for option pricing at a basic level. It will be helpful if you already know standard C++, and also if you have seen mathematical models of what is being implemented here.
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