What to read after Natenberg?

[Equalizer]

Quote from monkeyjoe:

If you struggle with the quant finance maths at first, Neftci is a good, soft intro, and so is Wilmott. For me, at least, intuition about how trades/markets work is a different part of my brain than building a base of competence with stochastic calculus/greeks.

MJ

Indeed, the book by the late Salih Neftci is very good if your maths is not too strong. I wouldn't really recommend Wilmott's bullshit 3-volume set. I'd rather recommend Kerry Back's book on derivative securities and Joshi's book on math finance. At least Joshi was a quant at RBS (with Rebonato and Jaeckel) before returning to academia.

In previous jobs I always gave Back's book to new hires. Well written and some VBA code to implement and get your hands dirty.

Of course, read Filthy's two books. His second one first (if that makes any sense).

 

[byteme]

To the OP, what do you want to be?

There's no substitute for just getting on a doing it if you want to develop your trading skills. Most of the books mentioned will likely NOT help you with that.

If on the other hand you want to start developing your own theoretical models and/or code up existing models then you can possibily look at Hull, though that's more aimed at MBA types.

Wilmott is of a similar difficulty level to Hull but still requires solid Calculus, Probability, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations knowledge.

It's not going to make you a better trader though.

Baird is not a bad option for your level. Cottle is also recommended from a practical point of view.

All other books e.g. Wilmott, Joshi, Neftci etc. take you down the quant route.

 

[ferrycorsten]

Quote from byteme:

To the OP, what do you want to be?

There's no substitute for just getting on a doing it if you want to develop your trading skills. Most of the books mentioned will likely NOT help you with that.

If on the other hand you want to start developing your own theoretical models and/or code up existing models then you can possibily look at Hull, though that's more aimed at MBA types.

Wilmott is of a similar difficulty level to Hull but still requires solid Calculus, Probability, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations knowledge.

It's not going to make you a better trader though.

Baird is not a bad option for your level. Cottle is also recommended from a practical point of view.

All other books e.g. Wilmott, Joshi, Neftci etc. take you down the quant route.

I'm 31 and a CPA. Wish I started learning this stuff when I was 20, I would much rather be a market maker.

I am a bit of an academic (have a master's in taxation) so the theoretical/academic books I enjoy. But the goal is still to learn things that can help me succeed in the options world.

I want to read Baird, Sinclair, Hull, then when I'm confident in my understanding of those three I want to start modeling. Not too interested in automated trading at this point...I prefer the live interaction of doing things myself. Plus with coding I'd be starting at ground zero.