Traders Guns and Money
05 Apr 06

“Look, it’s quite simple,” I said, breaking down the hierarchy of the trading floor. “There are sales people – they lie to clients. Traders lie to sales and to risk managers. Risk managers? They lie to the people who run the place – correction, think they run the place. The people who run the place lie to shareholders and regulators.” “Oh yes,” I remembered our quantitative colleagues. “I forgot the quants – our fabulous rocket scientists! When last heard from, they were trying to develop a model for lying.” “And clients?” One of the trainees asked tentatively. I thought about it for a few seconds. “Clients. They lie mainly to themselves!” Entering the world of derivatives trading is to enter this world of beautiful lies.

From Traders Guns and Money

"Ever since Warren Buffett memorably described derivatives as "financial weapons of mass destruction" there has been a thriller waiting to be written about them." 

The Financial Times

Traders Guns and Money is that thriller - but it’s true. Liar’s Poker with more lies and more insight, Traders, Guns & Money is a sensational insider’s view of the business of trading and marketing derivatives.

In the dazzling world of derivatives trading shady figures lurk behind the glittering gold. It is a place where greed and ignorance combine to cause disaster for the unwitting and riches for the avaricious.

Using satire and black humour, Traders Guns and Money gives an insight into the measured madness that underlies trading in complex financial products. It is a wry and wickedly comic exposé of the culture, games, and pure deceptions played out every day in trading rooms around the world, usually with other people’s money.

It kicks off at high speed with a fictitious court case, whose characters can be found prowling the world of derivatives, including Mark Neverfail (the fearsome Head of Global Markets), the hapless clients and their wily lawyer. This page turning story is not just there to amuse and slightly frighten you. It illuminates the dangers companies face when handling those financial weapons of mass destruction.

The remainder of the book describes the processes by which a small group of gifted, if rapacious, individuals parlay their knowledge of the arcane world of financial products into wealth, leaving shareholders, clients, regulators, and the tax paying ordinary public to bear most of the risk.

The book has been written for two audiences. The first is people in banking and finance, whether or not they are involved in derivatives directly. They will find it a wry and entertaining read and may recognize themselves or people they work with.

It is also for those of us who want an accessible introduction to this weird and wonderful world. It will perhaps confirm our worst fears and prejudices about these strange instruments, what they are used for and the people who trade them.

Frank Partnoy (author of FIASCO and Infectious Greed) was enthusiastic saying: "Make room for another must-read on the shelves of any City or Wall Street trader, salesman, or victim.   Traders, Guns & Money is filled with dirty little secrets, some old and some new.  Anyone who has worked on a trading floor will nod and laugh.  Those who have not will shake their heads and cry.  When "derivatives" and "f******" appear together on every other page, you know someone has written the truth about financial innovation.   Be afraid."

Whether you move in the financial world yourself, know people who do, or have money invested in stocks, shares or derivatives, this is a fascinating read guaranteed to make you think

This is a real practice guide, the book that tells you what it’s really like to chair by sharing the stories of dozens of chairs from all types and sizes of organisations across the public and charity sectors.

Covering topics you won’t find addressed anywhere else, it provides a pooled wealth of experience from which all chairs, whatever their level of experience can learn something about being more efficient, effective and quite simply lifting their performance, and that of the board they head.

If this book saves you making just one potential mistake, helps you tackle a tricky situation from a position of greater confidence, or reassures you that others have been where you are now and made it through, then it will have done its job.

	Traders, Guns & Money
	Author	Satyajit Das
	Pub Date	18 Apr 2006
	Price	£20.00
	Publisher	Financial Times/ Prentice Hall
	ISBN	0273704745
		Click here for further information or to purchase Traders, Guns & Money.

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