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Naked Option (Hardcover)

by Joe Kolman (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
RRP: £16.99
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Naked Option + Wall and Mean: A Novel + Twenty Something
Price For All Three: £31.71

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Harriman House Publishing (24 Sep 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1905641478
  • ISBN-13: 978-1905641475
  • Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.2 x 2.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 491,726 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review
"A page-turner and a slice of life - on and off the trading floor."- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, best-selling author of THE BLACK SWAN and FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS"Joe Kolman, a respected financial journalist, uses deft touches, unexpected plot shifts and mordant wit to create a fast-paced and entertaining financial thriller with a decidedly firm sense of location in New York in the days after 9/11."- Satyajit Das, author of 'Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives' (2006)"Full of suspense, sex and surprise."- Alison Lurie, Pulitzer-prize winning author of FOREIGN AFFAIRS"A volatile cocktail of sex and murder that's also a remarkably realistic and humane portrayal of dealing room life."- Patrick L. Young, author of "The New Capital Market Revolution: The Winners, the Losers and the Future of Finance""A keen observer of the finance industry shows the underbelly of Wall Street traders and New York culture. A rare work of literary finance fiction."- Frank Partnoy, author of FIASCO: The Inside Story of a Wall Street Trader.

Alison Lurie, Pulitzer-prize winning author of FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Full of suspense, sex and surprise.

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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Naked Option
80% buy the item featured on this page:
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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
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 (1)
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 (1)
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining and a learning experience, 28 Nov 2007
By Selina (Ealing, London) - See all my reviews
I found Naked Option completely unputdownable. This book is
evidence that you can learn more about the financial world
and options trading from a good novel than you can from any
average non-fiction book, but to talk about this work in
such utilitarian terms is to do it a gross disservice. Here
is ultimately a proper, bona fide, high quality novel,
which could be read by anybody who enjoys fiction, only the
world it leads you into is that of the trading floor,
fraud, compliance, and how gay people must hide their
>>>>>>> sexuality in an options trading environment. Twists and
>>>>>>> turns in the plot made me want to read on and I found myself
>>>>>>> immersed in the world of options trading, with its bluff
>>>>>>> macho culture, and its opportunities for fraud. The contrast
>>>>>>> in the story between financial world crime and murder, and
>>>>>>> how an outside policeman could not really understand the
>>>>>>> financial centre, does strike a note of truth. It is set
>>>>>>> in the post-9/11 culture with a US background, which gives
>>>>>>> it a freshness and an immediacy. The love interest works
>>>>>>> well and adds realism.If you want to know how City trading
>>>>>>> really works, be sure to read this book, but you will very
>>>>>>> likely become hooked as I was, which will take up your
>>>>>>> spare time for a few days in a pretty pleasurable and
>>>>>>> interesting way. If you read this book, you will be glad
>>>>>>> that you had.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Decent Financial Thriller, 7 Nov 2007
By A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
I'm generally not one for Wall Street (or any other street) financial thrillers, but I do like fiction that provides a glimpse at new worlds, o thought I'd give this one 10-15 pages to hook me. Rather to my surprise, it did pull me in and I found myself generally entertained throughout. Instead of relying on the standard greed-driven plotline, former financial journalist Kolman delivers a more character-driven crime story set in the world of options trading.

The protagonist is Dave Ackerman, a whiz trader who, in the days following 9/11, has a lapse in self-control over his ego that leads him into a classic "traders dilemma." This is the kind of situation where a trade has gone so poorly that you're probably going to be fired, and the only possibility of recovering is to bet even more money to try and recover. Of course, if that doesn't work, the losses can destroy not just a single career, but an entire firm. (In real life, the most famous example of this is Nick Leeson's $1.4 billion demolition of Barings in 1995.) Dave's problem doesn't approach that level, but it is bad enough to cost him his job and trader's licence.

Bereft of options (ha ha), he takes a job as a kind of financial investigator for another firm. They are convinced that there i something funny going on with their options traders, but need his expertise to figure it out. Dave is teamed with a comely young woman not long out of B-school to try and do some financial detective work. This is all surprisingly engrossing, and the technicalities of it all are quite well explained. What's somewhat less engrossing is the obligatory attraction between the two, and their halting relationship. To his credit, Kolman does a refreshing job of portraying the sexual side of this as very awkward and confusing, however the book could have done without the obligatory romantic subplot.

Meanwhile, a dead body or two pop up, and Dave's financial investigation may be related to the corpses. A distinctive element in all this is the treatment of homophobia within the all-male world of traders, which shifts from cultural commentary to key plot element as the story goes on. Ultimately, however, the financial shenanigans prove to be a good deal more interesting than the possible murders. On the whole, the book is nicely written and clever enough to satisfy readers looking for a a Wall Street-set thriller, but isn't going to end up on any best-of-the-year lists.
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