Guide To Financial Markets [Hardcover]

Fund Manager - 'a useful reference source for all those involved in the industry' and 'Financial journalists, investment advisers and fund managers could all find Levinson's guide extremely useful' The Business Economist (Society of Business Economists' Journal) -'covers the breadth of products and markets admirably. Will provide the relative newcomer to financial markets with a good overview of this extremely complex subject area.'

‘a useful reference source for all those involved in the industry’

The definitive guide to why different financial markets exist and how they operate. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

The definitive guide to why different financial markets exist and how they operate. Extensively revised and updated, the 4th edition of this best-selling book, brings the reader right up to speed with the latest developments in financial instruments and provides a clear and incisive guide to this complex world that even those who work in it often find hard to understand. With chapters on the markets that deal with money, foreign exchange, equities, bonds, commodities, financial futures, options and other derivatives, it looks at why these markets exist, how they work and who trades in them, and it gives a run-down of the factors that affect prices and rates. Business history is littered with disasters that occurred because people involved their firms in financial markets they didn't properly understand. Read this book and you and your company won't be new additions to this list. A fabulous source of reference for anyone wishing to understand financial markets - there is no better guide.

Financial markets have been around ever since people settled down to growing crops and trading them with each other. They take many different forms and operate in many different ways. But all of them, whether highly organised, like the New York Stock Exchange, or highly informal, like money-changers in Africa, serve the sane basic functions, which range from providing a way of setting prices and valuing assets, through raising capital or investing it, to managing exposure to risk. The credit crunch and ensuing financial crisis brought home to everyone the enormous influence that financial markets exercise and highlighted the pace of innovation in them and the instruments they trade. This book explains why the different financial markets exist, how they work and who trades in them, and gives a run-down of the factors that affect prices and rates. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Guide to Financial Markets The credit crunch and ensuing financial crisis showed just how volatile the financial markets can be. Even slight movements in market prices can have substantial effects on national economies, businesses and institutional investors such as pension funds. Individual investors, meanwhile, face choices among highly complex financial products that are increasingly difficult to get to grips with. Astute use of the financial markets can make all the difference to the bottom line. But in order to act astutely you must understand what you are doing. The Guide to Financial Markets provides a clear explanation of the different markets. It goes well beyond stocks and bonds to explain the purposes and uses of equity futures and options, securitised investments, and innovations such as the credit derivatives that can help manage risk but can also prove toxic when not used carefully. And so for anyone who wants a good understanding of: -why markets matter -foreign-exachange markets - money markets -bond markets -securitisation -international fixed-income markets -equity markets -futures and options markets -derivatives markets there is no better reference source than this fully revised and updated fifth edition of the Guide to Financial Markets. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Marc Levinson is a former finance editor of The Economist and has published widely, in journals such as Harvard Business Review and Foreign Affairs.