An Introduction To Mathematical Finance

This textbook aims to fill the gap between those that offer a theoretical treatment without many applications and those that present and apply formulas without appropriately deriving them. The balance achieved will give readers a fundamental understanding of key financial ideas and tools that form the basis for building realistic models, including those that may become proprietary. Numerous carefully chosen examples and exercises reinforce the student’s conceptual understanding and facility with applications. The exercises are divided into conceptual, application-based, and theoretical problems, which probe the material deeper. The book is aimed toward advanced undergraduates and first-year graduate students who are new to finance or want a more rigorous treatment of the mathematical models used within. While no background in finance is assumed, prerequisite math courses include multivariable calculus, probability, and linear algebra. The authors introduce additional mathematical tools as needed. The entire textbook is appropriate for a single year-long course on introductory mathematical finance. The self-contained design of the text allows for instructor flexibility in topics courses and those focusing on financial derivatives. Moreover, the text is useful for mathematicians, physicists, and engineers who want to learn finance via an approach that builds their financial intuition and is explicit about model building, as well as business school students who want a treatment of finance that is deeper but not overly theoretical.

This textbook contains the fundamentals for an undergraduate course in mathematical finance aimed primarily at students of mathematics. Assuming only a basic knowledge of probability and calculus, the material is presented in a mathematically rigorous and complete way. The book covers the time value of money, including the time structure of interest rates, bonds and stock valuation; derivative securities (futures, options), modelling in discrete time, pricing and hedging, and many other core topics. With numerous examples, problems and exercises, this book is ideally suited for independent study.

This textbook on the basics of option pricing is accessible to readers with limited mathematical training. It is for both professional traders and undergraduates studying the basics of finance. Assuming no prior knowledge of probability, Sheldon M. Ross offers clear, simple explanations of arbitrage, the Black-Scholes option pricing formula, and other topics such as utility functions, optimal portfolio selections, and the capital assets pricing model. Among the many new features of this third edition are new chapters on Brownian motion and geometric Brownian motion, stochastic order relations and stochastic dynamic programming, along with expanded sets of exercises and references for all the chapters.

The quantitative nature of complex financial transactions makes them a fascinating subject area for mathematicians of all types. This book gives an insight into financial engineering while building on introductory probability courses by detailing one of the most fascinating applications of the subject.

An Introduction to the Mathematics of Finance: A Deterministic Approach, 2e, offers a highly illustrated introduction to mathematical finance, with a special emphasis on interest rates. This revision of the McCutcheon-Scott classic follows the core subjects covered by the first professional exam required of UK actuaries, the CT1 exam. It realigns the table of contents with the CT1 exam and includes sample questions from past exams of both The Actuarial Profession and the CFA Institute. With a wealth of solved problems and interesting applications, An Introduction to the Mathematics of Finance stands alone in its ability to address the needs of its primary target audience, the actuarial student. Closely follows the syllabus for the CT1 exam of The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries Features new content and more examples Online supplements available: http://booksite.elsevier.com/9780080982403/ Includes past exam questions from The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and the CFA Institute

The purpose of this book is to provide a rigorous yet accessible introduction to the modern financial theory of security markets. The main subjects are derivatives and portfolio management. The book is intended to be used as a text by advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students. It is also likely to be useful to practicing financial engineers, portfolio manager, and actuaries who wish to acquire a fundamental understanding of financial theory. The book makes heavy use of mathematics, but not at an advanced level. Various mathematical concepts are developed as needed, and computational examples are emphasized.

This concise textbook provides a unique framework to introduce Quantitative Finance to advanced undergraduate and beginning postgraduate students. Inspired by Newton's three laws of motion, three principles of Quantitative Finance are proposed to help practitioners also to understand the pricing of plain vanilla derivatives and fixed income securities. The book provides a refreshing perspective on Box's thesis that "all models are wrong, but some are useful." Being practice- and market-oriented, the author focuses on financial derivatives that matter most to practitioners. The three principles of Quantitative Finance serve as buoys for navigating the treacherous waters of hypotheses, models, and gaps between theory and practice. The author shows that a risk-based parsimonious model for modeling the shape of the yield curve, the arbitrage-free properties of options, the Black-Scholes and binomial pricing models, even the capital asset pricing model and the Modigliani-Miller propositions can be obtained systematically by applying the normative principles of Quantitative Finance.

Provides an introductory text on financial mathematics. Apart from presenting two Nobel Prize winning theories of Black, Scholes and Merton for option pricing and Mean-Variance approach of Markowitz for portfolio optimization, the text also includes now standard topics of interest rate and interest rate derivatives.