Financial Markets

What is finance? What questions does it principally concern itself with answering? What are the underpinnings of the means by which it attempts to answer those questions? And what conclusions does it reach? Written with the thoughtful reader in mind, and in a manner not requiring any prior familiarity with finance or economics, this book addresses these important fundamental questions. While not written as a how-to guide to investing, in general or in specific asset classes or marketplaces, the thoughtful reader will come away with a widely applicable conceptual framework as to how to think about doing so in virtually any investment application. Its contents are those which underpin all such markets and, overtly or not, the actions of market participants across time. It is the foundation upon which our vast financial edifice is built. And, for these reasons, the book’s two authors have found it to be a fascinating and worthwhile object of thought and attention for the past eighty combined years. The book is divided into two parts. The first, entitled “Foundations,” spans the initial ten chapters and concerns itself with the theory that underpins virtually all financial markets, Default-Free and Risk-Free Assets; Mean-Variance Theory; the Capital Asset Pricing Model and its applications; Arbitrage Pricing Theory; the Finite State Approach to Modern Finance; and Valuation. The second part, entitled “Markets,” explores these financial markets in detail by way of chapters individually dedicated to each, stock markets; bond markets; money markets; asset backed securities; futures and forward contracts; currency markets; options; swaps; and hedge and private equity funds. The book concludes with the exploration of select paradoxes in modern finance, with explanations proffered for their existence and perpetuation.