Rating: 
Summary: The best reference book on trading and exchanges
Review: This book's title understates its contents and scope: this is a comprehensive guide to how financial instrument trading works. If you ever wondered what happens when you place an order to sell 10 million shares of GOOG (which you may or may not already own), or what transpires when you try to corner the silver market like the Hunt brothers, you'll find all the details in this book. But it's more than that.
For the most part accurate and easy-to-read, the 600-page book also covers issues that are of most importance to traders: where to trade, when to trade, how to trade, and what price to trade at. Very detailed discussions reveal how the various market participants, from exchanges to broker-dealers to moronic traders, fulfill their respective roles in the Great Paper Wealth Game. Entire chapters are devoted to speculators vs. liquidity suppliers. The discussions on how each type of players trade and try to outsmart one another offer terrific insights into the psychology and techniques of market players. Usually tedious topics such as order-matching rules and volatility measures are also covered well here.
This is not a book about how to read stock charts or build sophisticated multi-variate GARCH models to predict volatility. It's also not about how you could become a better gambler - the author says the gambler always loses, so you don't have much hope there.
This practioner's book is about financial markets and its inner workings and the human beings that drive them. If you want one authoritative reference volume on the mechanics of financial markets, this is it.
My only quibble is it's expensive for someone who has to pay for the book out of their own pocket.
Rating:
Summary: Computational Finance Students
Review: This is one of the books that tells you the working of the financial processes. We all know how to adjust for the price changes, interest rate changes etc. but this book tell you about the reasons why the changes take place and how different trades influences the market.One great thing about this book is that you can read it like a storybook, I completed it in four afternoons and I am very very happy that I have read this book. You would also find that a lot of jargon (of the marktet) will sound familiar after you are through with this book. In fact, this book would be very helpful for any students wishing to start his MS in Comp. Fin / Fin Engg as this tells you what is not taught in the class.
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