Financial Hacking

This book teaches financial engineering in an innovative way: by providing tools and a point of view to quickly and easily solve real front-office problems. Projects and simulations are not just exercises in this book, but its heart and soul. You will not only learn how to do state-of-the-art simulations and build exotic derivatives valuation models, you will also learn how to quickly make reasonable inferences based on incomplete information. This book will give you the expertise to make significant progress in understanding brand new derivatives given only a preliminary term sheet, thus making you extraordinarily valuable to banks, brokerage houses, trading floors, and hedge funds. Financial Hacking is not about long, detailed mathematical proofs or brief summaries of conventional financial theories; it is about engineering specific, useable answers to imprecise but important questions. It is an essential book both for students and for practitioners of financial engineering. MBAs in finance learn case-method and standard finance mainly by talking. Mathematical finance students learn the elegance and beauty of formulas mainly by manipulating symbols. But financial engineers need to learn how to build useful tools, and the best way to do that is to actually build them in a test environment, with only hypothetical profits or losses at stake. That's what this book does. It is like a trading desk sandbox that prepares graduate students or others looking to move closer to trading operations. Foreword Foreword (309 KB) Sample Chapter(s) Chapter 6: Puzzles and Bugs (269 KB) Chapter 9: The Best Trade in the World? (93 KB) Request Inspection Copy

A trader's dream: Sitting with a cool beer on the beach while his computer breeds money with automated trading. Can this actually work? It depends. This textbook covers the "algorithmic" part of algorithmic trading - not with "technical indicators", but with modern methods based on solid math and statistics. The author has developed so far about 600 trading systems for institutes and private traders, and writes about his experiences on the blog "The Financial Hacker". In his book you'll learn the tricks and traps, which methods work and which don't, and how to develop a trading system from the first idea until going live. Many example systems are presented with new trading methods, such as spectral analysis and statistical filters. You're introduced in proper testing with solid Walk Forward, Montecarlo, and Reality Check methods. All examples come with code ready to run. No matter if you are a beginner or a seasoned algo developer, this book will provide new insights into algorithmic trading. "Johann Christian Lotter has succeeded in writing an interesting and, above all, honest book: Instead of picture-book examples, it presents working code, instead of pink rhetoric, hard truth. All prospective traders interested in algorithmic trading should take a look at this book." TRADERS' August 2016

Popular anger against bankers and financial speculators has never been greater, yet the practical workings of the system remain opaque to many people. The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance aims to bridge the gap between protest slogans and practical proposals for reform. As a stockbroker turned campaigner, Brett Scott has a unique understanding of life inside and outside the system. The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance is a practical handbook for campaigners, academics and students who wish to deepen their understanding of the inner workings of the financial sector. It shows how financial knowledge can be used to build effective social and environmental campaigns. Scott covers topics frequently overlooked, such as the cultural aspects of the financial sector, and considers major issues such as agricultural speculation, carbon markets and tar sands financing. The book shows how activists can use the internal dynamics of the sector to reform it and showcases the growing alternative finance movement.

Don't pay for your home--hack it and live for free! Savvy investors have been using a little-known, but clever strategy in real estate for decades--and now, you will learn exactly how to perfect this trade secret! When mastered, house hacking can save you thousands of dollars in monthly expenses, build tens of thousands of dollars in equity each year, and provide the financial means to retire early. In fact, the average house hacker can turn a single-family home or small multifamily property into a cash-flowing investment. You can collect rent that completely covers your living expenses--and then some! In this book, serial house hacker Craig Curelop lays out the in-depth details so you can make your first (or next) house hack a huge success. Inside, you will learn: What house hacking is, and why it's one of the best methods for building wealth The different types of house-hacking strategies you can use--no one size fits all here! The incredible connection between house hacking, wealth building, and early retirement How to get started house hacking--even with low income or low savings Strategies to house hack with a family, spouse, or independently How to find the ideal house hack property--even in a competitive or expensive market Stories from real estate investors all over the country on their house-hacking triumphs, mishaps, and their purpose behind house hacking. Property-management strategies to make ownership a breeze House hacking doesn't have to be a mystery. Discover why so many successful investors support their investment careers with house hacking--and learn from a frugality expert who has "hacked" his way toward financial freedom!

Businesses, investors, and consumers are grappling with the seismic daily changes technology has brought to the banking and finance industry. The Money Hackers is the story of fintech’s major players and explores how these disruptions are transforming even money itself. Whether you’ve heard of fintech or not, it’s already changing your life. Have you ever “Venmoed” someone? Do you think of investing in Bitcoin--even though you can’t quite explain what it is? If you’ve deposited a check using your iPhone, that’s fintech. If you’ve gone to a bank branch and found it’s been closed for good, odds are that’s because of fintech too. This book focuses on some of fintech’s most powerful disruptors--a ragtag collection of financial outsiders and savants--and uses their incredible stories to explain not just how the technology works, but how the Silicon Valley thinking behind the technology, ideas like friction, hedonic adaptation, democratization, and disintermediation, is having a drastic effect on the entire banking and finance industry. Upon reading The Money Hackers, you will: Feel empowered with the knowledge needed to spot the opportunities the next wave of fintech disruptions will bring. Understand the critical pain points that fintech is resolving, through a profile of the major finsurgents behind the disruption. Topic areas include Friction (featuring founders of Venmo), Aggregate and Automate (featuring Adam Dell, founder of Open Table and brother of Michael Dell), and Rise of the Machines (featuring Jon Stein, founder of robo-advisor Betterment). Learn about some of the larger-than-life characters behind the fintech movement. The Money Hackers tells the fascinating story of fintech--how it began, and where it is likely taking us.

Economic diversity abounds in a more-than-capitalist world, from worker-recuperated cooperatives and anti-mafia social enterprises to caring labour and the work of Earth Others, from fair trade and social procurement to community land trusts, free universities and Islamic finance. The Handbook of Diverse Economies presents research that inventories economic difference as a prelude to building ethical ways of living on our dangerously degraded planet. With contributing authors from twenty countries, it presents new thinking around subjectivity and methodology as strategies for making other worlds possible.

Discover the path to financial freedom with this step-by-step guide to house hacking—the simple real estate investment strategy that lets you live for free and earn income. For most people, rent or a mortgage takes up the largest chunk of their income. But with house hacking, that piece can come down to virtually zero—and it’s easier than you’d think! In its simplest form, house hacking is the real estate investment strategy where you buy a multifamily house and rent it out to cover your costs and live for free. But this can come in all shapes and sizes, whether it be inviting in roommates, owning multiple properties, live-in flips, vacation rentals, or even participating in Airbnb. In The Everything Guide to House Hacking, you will learn: -The pros and cons of house hacking -The minimum you need to get started -What a smart investment looks like -Whether renovating is worth it -How to be a responsible landlord -How to find responsible tenants -And more! Discover everything you want to know about homeownership and how you can build wealth from your investment properties. The path to financial freedom starts here.