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Rating: 
Summary: Good stuff, Bad writing
Review: A few months ago, I finished reading Hull's book and started on Joshi's book. Now I've gotta say, it was not easy transferring from Hull's accurate and concise writing style to THIS one. When reading Joshi's book, I actually found it almost impossible to complete even a couple of pages without seeing a striking grammatical error. Besides, there are cases when graphs are flawed or at least incomplete, e.g., the graph when Joshi first introduced the replication principle. All this is why I am deducing one star off the score.
Other than that, this book sure can be deemed beautiful. I especially like the part (Chap. 6) where Martingale pricing is introduced. Just as what the post above has pointed out, the programming projects in the back of the book are terrific. Joshi's really found some balance between preserving the essential technical part and keeping it read-able. I like what I see and 4 stars does it deserve.
Rating:
Summary: Quite expansive and digressive for an introduction
Review: As a computational engineer I purchased this book to obtain an introduction to mathematical finance and stochastic calculus. Dr. Joshi demonstrates page after page that he possesses a strong expertise of the material and a motive to explain everything at length to enlighten the reader.
The problem for me is Dr. Joshi's book gets to be too verbose, as I found myself giving up by chapter 6. In a way, Dr. Joshi's delivery has a randomness that reflects the nature of his topic as he digresses from one perspective to another. It seems as if he does this to compensate for mathematical naivete presumed on the part of the reader. Some of the discussions and derivations go on so long they become tedious, when a few well-constructed formulae or diagrams might be worth a thousand words. Even though he includes a section on "The Greeks", I couldn't find a complete set of mathematical expressions for them anywhere in the book. He offers some useful computer projects in an appendix, but check his website for errata.
Perhaps Dr. Joshi's treatment is better suited for a student more prepared to absorb his wealth of extra insight than an introductory reader like myself. Bjork's Arbitrage Theory in Continuous Time covers similar concepts more efficiently in far fewer pages. For comparison, Joshi requires over 100 pages to introduce martingale measure, while Bjork does it in 9 pages. By introducing critical definitions and formulas in a more linear and concise progression, Bjork allows the mathematics to be the story.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent and very comprehensive book
Review: I found it by far the most useful introductory book on
pricing financial derivatives. The text is easy to understand,
and the author gives lots of attention to small but important
details. It also doesn't stop at the Black-Sholes theory
and gives a lot of information on what's beyond the basic
Black-Scholes pricing. I was especially happy to see chapters
devoted to pricing fixed income derivatives.
At the end of the book there is a set of programming projects
which were very useful to me.
Without doubt I'd recommend it to any student in Financial
mathematics.
Rating:
Summary: An outstanding book in a crowded field
Review: In recent years bookshelves (and readers) have groaned under the weight of new First Courses in Mathematical Finance. There is, of course, a huge overlap in content and it is no easy task to write a book which is both better than its predecessors and genuinely novel. In both tasks Mark Joshi has succeeded admirably: this book deserves to become the leader in its field.Finding the right level of mathematical sophistication is a difficult balancing act in which it is impossible to please all readers. Here, the author has had a clear vision that the principal audience is the practising or potential quantitative analyst (or quant) and writes accordingly; it is impossible to do better than taking an approach of this sort. Such a quant must have a certain minimum level of mathematical background (a good degree in a numerate discipline). By definition, this has to be assumed for a decent understanding of the material, but the author always has an eye on what a quant really needs to know. Integrated into this mathematical work is a good deal of information about how markets, banks and other corporations operate in practice, not found in more academically-oriented books. The first half of the book includes the core material found in any decent first course on the subject including basic stochastic calculus, pricing of European options through discounted expectation under a risk-neutral measure, the Black-Scholes differential equation and so forth. Where this book really stands out, however, is the exceptional clarity with which the key concepts are separated. Not only are three different ways for deriving the Black-Scholes formula presented (through PDEs, expectation, and the limit of discrete tree-models) ; much more significantly, the different roles played by hedging, replication and equivalent martingale measures in enforcing a price are made crystal clear. In whatever way you already think about this material, you will almost certainly come away with something new from reading this treatment. In my case, for example, I gained a much greater understanding of why "risk-neutral" pricing is so called. The second half of the book, roughly speaking, covers a selection of more sophisticated material. The major areas covered include interest-rate derivatives and models; and more complicated models for stock price evolution (such as stochastic-volatility, jump-diffusion and variance-gamma) that have been proposed to correct inadequacies in the Black-Scholes model such as its failure to explain market smiles. Once the core ideas have been so thoroughly explained in the first half, a great deal of interesting and diverse material can be covered rapidly yet with a great deal of clarity and coherence, relating the new models to core ideas such as uniqueness of prices and hedging issues. Those with quantitative finance experience are still likely to find a good deal that is new and worthwhile in this book. And if you a thinking about becoming a quant, I cannot think of a better book to read first.
Rating:
Summary: A classic on mathematical finance.
Review: Lot's of material, well covered, not too technical. This book has been written by a quant expert who knows how to write.
Rating:
Summary: A must read for anyone interested in mathematical finance
Review: The modern paradigm within mathematical finance is the use of martingale
methods for the pricing of options; an understanding of it is
critcal not only to quants who use these mathematical tools on a day
to day basis, but also to risk professionals in general when understanding the
risks inherent in a new product. At present, however,
there are very few accessible texts that discuss this at a level that
is suitable for the (sizeable) interested audience; texts either do not
have adequate coverage of the martingale methodology, concentrating on the
older less insightful pde methods, or concentrate (too much in the
reviewers opinion) on mathematical rigour and
require a substantial understanding
of probability theory before one is able to understand and appreciate
the finance. Mark Joshi's book fills this niche admirably: it is mathematically rigorous
where it needs to be, but more importantly "physically" insightful --- the
author takes considerable pain in assisting the reader in developing
an intuition both for the models used and the products that are
priced. However, the mathematics is all there; more importantly
for the finance professional there are details on how to implement the
various models described. Again in marked contrast to other texts available
the book includes a number of relevant exercises (with solutions) and
computer projects --- features which this reviewer welcomes.
The book is also to be applauded on the fact that
it does not end after a discussion of the Black Scholes stock case ! Instead
the second half of the book discusses, admittedly assuming a slightly higher
level of mathematical sophistication (but never beyond, what one would
expect of a good physical sciences/mathematics graduate), multiasset options,
the LIBOR market model, stochastic volatility and jump diffusion models.
This again is a key strength of the text, rendering these subjects far
more accessible to a wider audience. In short this is a book which anyone who is interested in mathematical
finance should have on their book shelf.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book on the basics
Review: This book comes in between Wilmott and the more technical books.
And its by no means complete, if you want a more comprehensive treatment you may want to buy wilmott.
And if you need something more technical you should
get the book by Oskendal and/or Nielsen. If you want to get an inexpensive book then go for this.
Rating:
Summary: Most comprehensive
Review: This is the most comprehensive and up to date textbook on quantitative finance that I have seen so far. Joshi is an excellent mathematician and an excellent quant. He knows finance like the back of his hand, and explains it very well.
Rating: 
Summary: Not to hard to tell a bad attempt to look like a real review
Review: When you read the 1st 2 reviews of this book,
remember the tone and smell of the review,
because thats what it sounds and smell like
if the author himself ( or his pals) were to
write the review. Also, it's seem like those reviews are in quickly,
like 10 minutes after the book started shipping???
But I could be wrong but maybe not?????
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