Stochastic Implied Volatility: A Factor-Based Model (Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems)

Book Description

This book presents a factor-based model of the stochastic evolution of the implied volatility surface. The model allows for the integrated and consistent pricing and hedging, risk management, and trading of equity index derivatives as well as volatility derivatives. In the first part, the book develops a unifying theory for the analysis of contingent claims under both the real-world measure and the risk-neutral measure in an environment of stochastic implied volatility. On the basis of transaction data, the second part of the book provides extensive statistical analyses on the dynamics of the implied volatility surface of German DAX options and proposes a four-factor model to describe its evolution. The model is validated and tested on market data. The final part deals with potential applications of the model in the fields of exotic option pricing, value at risk, and volatility trading.

Book Description

This booklet gives an overview of the Think Like a Genius Process, a change strategy which helps individuals and organizations go beyond narrow, compartmentalized thinking; improve communication, teamwork, and collaboration; and achieve breakthrough thinking.

Book Description

Professionals today, whether scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, or managers, need to maximize their effectiveness. Real world problems are complex and must be tackled with adequate conceptual tools. Hard work and motivation are not enough. Professionals need to think strategically in order to choose the right problem to solve, to solve it in a cost-effective way, to use resources efficiently, and to be innovative and productive. Written in a concise, accessible style, Thinking Strategically goes beyond brainstorming motivational books to provide the power tools needed to dissect problems and to find innovative solutions. These tools are based on an understanding of the power of bottlenecks, paradox, scale and perspective constraints, and feedback as leverage points for getting a grip on the problem. The result is a practical book for managers and other professionals about the strategic use of effort that can lead to astonishing levels of productivity.

Customer Reviews:

An Outstanding Professional Guide.......2005-01-22

This is a must-have guide for anyone in, or preparing to work in, a professional field involving scientific discovery, creating things, or solving complex real-world problems.

What are the three pillars of professional productivity?.......2001-07-16

Knowing how to increase my productivity has benefited me in several ways: monetarily, satisfaction, competitive advantages for myself and clients, etc. Leohle explains why skill, motivation, and strategic use of time and effort results in professional success. Worthy library addition for any thinker.

Interesting ideas on how we can be our own guru.......1999-08-25

Politicians have trusted advisers and strategists who guide them in their every move. There are, however, many professions that require innovative thinking and decision making, and whose practitioners have to be their own strategists. Of course, people in such occupations could do what most people do, which is to use a trusted colleague as a sounding board for their ideas. However, many times a colleague is not available, and even if one were, there is no guarantee that he or she will have the level of discernment needed for a particular problem. It is possible to circumvent the lack of a guru, a spin doctor or a discerning friend, by verifying our own ideas before implementing them. Loehle's book Thinking Strategically: Power Tools for Personal and Professional Advancement, teaches us how to condition our intellect to think ahead so that we can plan a strategy to attain that which is important to us. Naturally, this includes choosing the best path whilst avoiding pitfalls, side-tracking and even derailment from the path. For that, we must learn how to study the particular, while keeping an eye on the whole, and to keep in perspective several logical and causal connections simultaneously. Then, when we master how to think by ourselves, we must learn how to be our own sounding board, that is, how to check our results against all possible errors that can occur during the thinking process and compare them objectively against a known standard. This aspect of strategic thinking is referred to as reality check. The author distinguishes two types: internal and external. The former is important because many of the patterns we perceive are not real but artefacts of our imagination or, may have resulted from an array of potential errors of thinking such as faulty generalization, bad use of logic, incoherence and bad risk checking. The external reality check is like scientific hypothesis testing or the test drive of a new car, and it requires us to submit our result to an array of tests to discredit it, and finally to peer review. One does not need to be a book worm to fully appreciate this book but being reasonably well-read in scientific and technological matters will help to fully appreciate the examples taken from the great innovators. Thinking Strategically is a cornucopia of rich pickings of allegories, common sense and wisdom tempered by the amusing illustrations of Richard Loehle. I recommend this book for anyone challenged to provide novel ideas or solutions to problems still untackled by routine manuals. pires.obrien@netmatters.co.uk

This book show you how to be your own guru........1999-08-24

Good content, bad writing.......1998-03-01

This book was higly recommended to me by a colleague, and after reading it I realize that the content is indeed very good. But the aridity in the author's writing style sometimes jeopardize the content. The text should be more pleasant to read, with more passion and more fun, but instead, it reads like a scientific thesis, with almost no emotion. The few times the author tries to throw a little humor into the text, it looks like it's out of context. But, again, it is worth reading for the very well structured message about strategic thinking tools and techniques, even if ater a while you become a little bored.

Book Description

For more than a decade, photographer Linda Dufurrena has recorded with powerful eloquence the rugged, heartbreakingly beautiful landscape of northern Nevada and the patterns of life on the Dufurrena family ranch in the Quinn River Valley. Her work has appeared in magazines and has been widely exhibited, but now, for the first time, over 100 of her finest photographs are collected in book form. Accompanied by a brilliant essay by her daughter-in-law, geologist Carolyn Dufurrena, that discusses the rhythms of the land and of life on the ranch, the photographs in Fifty Miles from Home vividly depict the heart of the West and its fabled ranch culture.

Within the fifty-mile circle of territory over which the Dufurrena family ranch operates--territory ranging from the edges of the barren Black Rock Desert to high, aspen-filled mountain basins--Linda and Carolyn Dufurrena follow the annual cycle of ranch work and the seasonal changes of the surrounding landscape. Life in this remote Nevada backcountry is shaped by the challenges of the austere Great Basin desert around the ranch and by the time-honored skills of generations of ranch families. We witness in Linda Dufurrena's magnificent color photographs the seasons of lambing and cattle drives; the work of cowboys and sheepherders; the animals around the ranch, from orphan lambs to horses to an arrogant rooster; and the close-knit ranch community of the multigenerational Dufurrena family and its hired workers. And around the ranch, in every direction, are vistas of breathtaking beauty as the natural landscape evolves through the seasons, as flowers bloom and storms pass overhead.

Nevada's modern ranches are beset by challenges of many kinds, yet many ranchers, against seemingly impossible odds, are stubbornly clinging to their heritage. Fifty Miles from Home helps to explain their loyalty to this beleagured life style: the joys of several generations of a family sharing work and play, and passing on traditional skills to the younger members; the proud dignity of hard work done well; the daily grace of living surrounded by a landscape of such beauty and magnificence. Linda and Carolyn Dufurrena's paean to Nevada's ranch culture and to the unexpected wonders of the Great Basin landscape will linger indelibly in the memory of every reader who discovers this superb book.

Customer Reviews:

Great Photography.......2007-01-03

I bought this for a friend who lives in France so they could see what the West looks like. The photography is wonderful

Highly Recommended.......2002-02-06

This is a wonderful book. The pictures of the Nevada landscape, from a very talented photographer who sees light in a magical way, are exceptionally beautiful. Particularly touching are the photographs of the authors' family and other workers at their ranch; one could wish that more of these very personal shots had been included.

The text is a perfect match for the photographs, conveying the flavor of life on the ranch and the exceptionally close family ties that develop when three generations work together with a common purpose. The reader is left hoping that this very exceptional environment and life style can be maintained in the generations to come; however there is a poignant description of the forces working against this outcome.

This Nevada ranch is a unique spot: the book makes an excellent gift for anyone (particularly western fans) who may not have the opportunity to visit the area in person. Highly recommended.

Book Description

Hikes varying from half-hour strolls to full-day adventures, this guidebook is for everyone, including families.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent companion for the recreational hiker .......2006-11-07

This guide was perfect for my two days of hiking at Alta in August 2006. As a purely recreational hiker traveling alone, this book was the ideal companion.

Handy and helpful intro, but too cursory for serious hikers.......2002-08-24

Brinkerhoff's little guide is just the right size for stuffing into the pocket of your cargo shorts or daypack, and it covers a fair sampling of short and easy South Salt Lake City and American Fork area hikes especially suited for hikers with limited abilities or families with small children. Also, the brief hike descriptions, with trailhead info, trail notes, distance and hiking time estimates, are generally helpful and reliable. But this book falls short of its potential, for it could easily have been greatly improved without sacrificing its convenient size or adding much to its cost simply by adding a few more details to some of the hike descriptions, extending the coverage a bit to include a few more popular and spectacular local hikes, and especially, by improving the trail maps.

Having hiked every trail in the book, many with this text (and others) in hand, I routinely found myself correcting or supplementing Brinkerhoff's cursory trail descriptions and hand-drawn maps (which are currently little more than wiggly dotted lines with a few essential features like paved roads, trailheads and lakes) with such things as as elevation, distance, topography and terrain notes, maps of converging trails, and occasionally, minor corrections. Admittedly, some of the trails covered in the book don't actually require anything more than instructions to the trailhead, but most of them connect with other trails the reader might want either to follow or avoid, and in such cases better descriptions and maps would be a genuine help. And since the book is so small (and admirably so, for it is by far the most portable of the many Utah trail books available), it could easily have been expanded to cover a greater number of short and popular local trails--like Ensign Peak, Provo's Rock Canyon, and a host of candidates from Sandy and Millcreek Canyon. As it is, despite the title, the text really only covers Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons and American Fork Canyon (with the inclusion of a single trail in Pleasant Grove under the American Fork Canyon section).

In my opinion, improvements of the kind I have mentioned would have made the book a much more serviceable text without adding significantly to either its bulk or price, and thus, should have been included. As it stands, I recommend "Best Easy Day Hikes SLC" as the best available short and cheap guide to easy Wasatch area trails, but a serious hiker will prefer something like David Day's "Utah's Favorite Hiking Trails," Steve Mann's "100 Hikes in Utah," or John Veranth's "Hiking the Wasatch," all of which are infinitely more informative and helpful--but also bigger and pricier. Or buy this for it's convenient size, and then supplement the applicable entries before your trip with important details from the bigger and better books. Hopefully, a reworked edition will soon save you the trouble.

Local Quick Picks.......2001-01-05

This book is a must have if you're a hiker near the Salt Lake City area. It's great for the novice hiker, families with smaller children, or nine-to-fivers like myself trying to pick up a quick hike on weekdays before or after work. All of the routes in this book have two conveniences in common. None of the trailheads are more than an hours drive from the bottom of the canyon, and none of the hikes are more than a few miles round trip. This makes it really easy to knock of several hikes a season. Most of them average about one hour of hiking time. Brian Brinkerhoff also does a great job of describing what kind of terrain to expect. Some of the included hikes are paved for easy wheelchair and stroller access, or for the ease of beginning trail runners worried about their ankles. Several on Brinkerhoff's list includes highlights such as waterfalls, alpine lakes, and even some mining ruins, concentrating on the little and big cottonwood canyon areas.

Book Description

The HarperCollins Sansoni is simply the best Italian dictionary you can buy. Here's why:

More than 900,000 entries and translations. The HarperCollins Sansoni goes with you into the twenty-first century. With complete coverage of contemporary terms in business, technology, politics, culture, and medicine, the HarperCollins Sansoni is the most authoritative single-volume Italian-English dictionary available.

More in-depth. The HarperCollins Sansoni is a significant advance in Italian-English dictionary making. Produced by one of the leading dictionary publishers in Italy, this dictionary demonstrates usage, idioms, and grammatical constructions in thousands of examples, enhancing your ability to make accurate translations.

More colloquial usage than any other Italian dictionary. With its emphasis on the language as it is used today, and full treatment of irregular forms of verbs, nouns, and adjectives, the HarperCollins Sansoni is the best book for translation and finding the right word.

Customer Reviews:

Be careful, it comes with a wrong enclosure!.......2006-09-28

I got it correctly, but I was scared because the dictionary has been sent in a "wrong" enclosure showing "Rizzoli-Larousse" dictionary, whereas inside there's the correct Collins' dictionary!

The dictionary is great, exactly as is written here: 900,000 entries, second, new edition.

Buy it with confidence.

Can't review the item until I get the Book !!!.......2006-08-24

I ordered this book and received the Grand Rizzoli Larousse collegiate (335,000 entries). I tried to exchange that for the Harper Collins unabridged (900,000 entries) and was told to get a refund from Amazon. I did this.

I ordered this book again from a different vendor and again received the Grand Rizzoli Larousse collegiate wrapped in the Harper Collins unabridged jacket. I tried to exchange this for the correct book and was sent yet another copy of the Grand Rizzoli Larousse collegiate.

I too would love to get this book.

Would first like to receive it!.......2006-08-18

I ordered the HarperCollins Sansoni Italian Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition, on the carefully evaluated basis of it's description on Amazon, plus positive reviews from friends.

What I actually received from Amazon was the Grande Rizzoli Larousse English Italian Dictionary. I made one attempt to reorder the HarperCollins Sansoni, but again received the Rizzoli Larousse, at which point I gave up. Perhaps Amazon could let me know when they find it? I understand it is a good book.

Exactly what you need.......2006-02-24

Finally a dictionary that contains literally every word you could ever hope/need to find!! Awesome product.

Harpercollins Sansoni Italian Dictionary: English-Italian, Italian-English.......2005-08-10

This is a wonderfull dictionary, and the blue heading is great. I am a professional Italian-English interpreter & translator, as well an Italian instructor,therefore I have the experience to judge it.
I have an older edition and I purchased the dictionary as a gift for one of my best students. I was mortified when, with the student, I realized that that particular book was defective.
Thank you for replacing it.

HarperCollins Sansoni Italian Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition

Average customer rating:

HarperCollins Sansoni Italian Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition
HarperCollins
Manufacturer: Collins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OEREPG

Book Description

Between 1850 and 1900 fashion in Paris became an art form in itself, its designers inspired to creations of ever greater elegance and exoticism by the examples of the Old Masters and the popular painters of the day. But as art inspired fashion, so fashion served as a muse for art: painters from Courbet to Whistler, from Manet to Vuillard borrowed the poses of their models from the fashion plates of the day, and embraced the intimate scene - a walk in the garden, a visit from a friend - so typical of the genre.

The dialogue between fashion and art is illustrated here by some 120 paintings - works by Ingres, Tissot, Renoir, Manet, Monet, Seurat and Degas among them - and a clutch of hitherto unpublished photographs from the recently discovered archive of Disderi.

Fashion in Art the Second Empire and Impressionism

Average customer rating:

Fashion in Art the Second Empire and Impressionism
Marie Simon
Manufacturer: Philip Wilson Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OSPRDS

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