Investments & Securities

The derivative practitioner’s expert guide to IFRS 9 application

Accounting for Derivatives explains the likely accounting implications of a proposed transaction on derivatives strategy, in alignment with the IFRS 9 standards. Written by a Big Four advisor, this book shares the author’s insights from working with companies to minimise the earnings volatility impact of hedging with derivatives. This second edition includes new chapters on hedging inflation risk and stock options, with new cases on special hedging situations including hedging components of commodity risk. This new edition also covers the accounting treatment of special derivatives situations, such as raising financing through commodity-linked loans, derivatives on own shares and convertible bonds. Cases are used extensively throughout the book, simulating a specific hedging strategy from its inception to maturity following a common pattern. Coverage includes instruments such as forwards, swaps, cross-currency swaps, and combinations of standard options, plus more complex derivatives like knock-in forwards, KIKO forwards, range accruals, and swaps in arrears.

Under IFRS, derivatives that do not qualify for hedge accounting may significantly increase earnings volatility. Compliant application of hedge accounting requires expertise across both the standards and markets, with an appropriate balance between derivatives expertise and accounting knowledge. This book helps bridge the divide, providing comprehensive IFRS coverage from a practical perspective.

• Become familiar with the most common hedging instruments from an IFRS 9 perspective
• Examine FX risk and hedging of dividends, earnings, and net assets of foreign subsidies
• Learn new standards surrounding the hedge of commodities, equity, inflation, and foreign and domestic liabilities
• Challenge the qualification for hedge accounting as the ultimate objective

IFRS 9 is set to replace IAS 39, and many practitioners will need to adjust their accounting policies and hedging strategies to conform to the new standard. Accounting for Derivatives is the only book to cover IFRS 9 specifically for the derivatives practitioner, with expert guidance and practical advice.

Read more

Trade currencies like a seasoned pro with this friendly, fact-filled guide to the forex market 

Over $6 trillion changes hands in the foreign exchange market every day. You can jump straight into the action with expert guidance from the hands-on Currency Trading For Dummies. You’ll learn how the foreign exchange market works, what factors influence currency values, and how to understand financial data. When you’re ready to create your own game plan for trading currencies, you’ll be able to build it around your investment objectives, experience level, and risk appetite. You’ll also find details on the latest trends in currency trading, including currency ETFs, cryptocurrencies, and currency options. 

From essential newcomer knowledge to advanced positioning advice, Currency Trading For Dummies offers straightforward instruction that helps you: 

• Source data and market intelligence, employ technical analysis, and use the latest tech to find the most lucrative trading opportunities 
• Understand the most recent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules and regulations governing currency trading 
• Avoid common pitfalls and mistakes made by novice and experienced currency traders 
• Recognize profitable opportunities in the world of ETFs, currency options, and cryptocurrencies 

Successful currency trading is within your grasp. This accessible roadmap to trading mastery provides the foundational knowledge you need to create a structured, winning strategy and conquer the forex market.  

Read more

Beginning with the very basics of technical analysis and market price behaviour, this book teaches you how to apply these concepts and principles to your own trading.

With this comprehensive and straight talking guide you will soon be using the same successful techniques and formulas as the professionals.

Learn how to:

• Understand those trading systems that will generate high returns

• Identify price patterns and trends

• Use the right technical indicators to get the best out of the markets

• Write and execute a trading plan that increases your chances of beating the market

Read more

Start your journey to financial success with Female Invest’s guide for safe, smart, and sustainable investing. This is an empowering and uplifting money manifesto, aiming to change the tides of financial power.

Are you one of the 68% of women worldwide earning less than a man doing the same job? Then you need to make your money work harder, starting now.

In Girls Just Want to Have Funds, the trio of founders behind the global movement Female Invest bring you an empowering five-step guide with a straight-talking message: you don’t have to be an expert or a millionaire to make money. Simply equip yourself with the easy-to-follow golden rules and tools of three finance gurus to find your confidence and open a whole new world of opportunities.

Whether you want to master the art of setting realistic goals, demystify financial jargon and markets, gain independence with a f*ck you fund, or finally get excited about your financial future, find all the answers you need and more with this comprehensive guide. Even if you only have a $1 savings fund to begin with, you too can have a rewarding, limitless life by investing in yourself and this book.

Read more

*WINNER OF THE WORK & LIFE BUSINESS BOOK AWARD 2023*

An accessible and practical guide to personal finance that busts myths, clarifies jargons and provides the best options for building your wealth.

More and more people are reassessing their lives as a result of the pandemic. Many have left their jobs or reduced their hours. Others have resolved to work only as long as they must, retiring early to focus on families and friends, hobbies or travel. Meanwhile, employers all over the world are experimenting with a four-day week.

Making the most of these choices requires having and growing enough money to enjoy your future life, without needing to worry about it running out. But when it comes to investing in a pension, there is a dizzying number of complex options available.

This book is designed to provide clear, objective guidance that cuts through the jargon, giving you control over your financial future. The authors strip away the marketing-speak, and through simple graphs, charts and diagrams, provide an evidence-based money manual that you can use again and again. They also alert you to myths and get-rich-quick schemes everyone should avoid.

It’s a highly practical and refreshingly honest book, written by two independent experts who have seen how the investment industry works from the inside, and how it profits from complexity, ignorance and fear. They show, in practical language, how UK savers and investors can beat this system and, crucially, make more money for themselves than they do for financial services firms.

Read more

The Incerto is an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision making when we don’t understand the world, expressed in the form of a personal essay with autobiographical sections, stories, parables, and philosophical, historical, and scientific discussions, in non-overlapping volumes that can be accessed in any order. The main thread is that while there is inordinate uncertainty about what is going on, there is great certainty as to what one should do about it.

This boxed set includes:
FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS
THE BLACK SWAN
THE BED OF PROCRUSTES
ANTIFRAGILE
SKIN IN THE GAME

Read more

“A timeless classic that will change how you approach life. There is a billion-dollar education inside this book.”
—Shane Parrish, founder of Syrus Partners and Farnam Street

“Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up,” Charles T. Munger advises in Poor Charlie’s Almanack. Originally published in 2005, this compendium of eleven talks delivered by the legendary Berkshire Hathaway vice-chairman between 1986 and 2007 has become a touchstone for a generation of investors and entrepreneurs seeking to absorb the enduring wit and wisdom of one of the great minds of the 20th and 21st centuries. 

Edited by Peter D. Kaufman, chairman and CEO of Glenair and longtime friend of Charlie Munger—whom he calls “this generation’s answer to Benjamin Franklin”—this abridged Stripe Press edition of Poor Charlie’s Almanack features a brand-new foreword by Stripe cofounder John Collison.  

Poor Charlie’s Almanack draws on Munger’s encyclopedic knowledge of business, finance, history, philosophy, physics, and ethics—and more besides—to introduce the latticework of mental models that underpin his rational and rigorous approach to life, learning, and decision-making. Delivered with Munger’s characteristic sharp wit and rhetorical flair, it is an essential volume for any reader seeking to go to bed a little wiser than when they woke up.

Read more

Does the complex world of quantitative finance make you quiver? You’re not alone! It’s a tough subject for even high-level financial gurus to grasp, but Quantitative Finance For Dummies offers plain-English guidance on making sense of applying mathematics to investing decisions. With this complete guide, you’ll gain a solid understanding of futures, options and risk, and get up-to-speed on the most popular equations, methods, formulas and models (such as the Black-Scholes model) that are applied in quantitative finance.

Also known as mathematical finance, quantitative finance is the field of mathematics applied to financial markets. It’s a highly technical discipline—but almost all investment companies and hedge funds use quantitative methods. This fun and friendly guide breaks the subject of quantitative finance down to easily digestible parts, making it approachable for personal investors and finance students alike. With the help of Quantitative Finance For Dummies, you’ll learn the mathematical skills necessary for success with quantitative finance, the most up-to-date portfolio and risk management applications and everything you need to know about basic derivatives pricing.

• Covers the core models, formulas and methods used in quantitative finance
• Includes examples and brief exercises to help augment your understanding of QF
• Provides an easy-to-follow introduction to the complex world of quantitative finance
• Explains how QF methods are used to define the current market value of a derivative security

Whether you’re an aspiring quant or a top-tier personal investor, Quantitative Finance For Dummies is your go-to guide for coming to grips with QF/risk management.

Read more

57th edition of the gold standard in US stock market trend, patterns, and cycles

In Stock Trader’s Almanac 2024, veteran trader and market strategist Jeffrey Hirsch delivers the latest edition of the most trusted source used by traders around the world to make sense of the complexities of the US stock market. You’ll master key cycles and trends, including the “January Barometer,” the “Santa Claus Rally,” the “Best Six Months,” and the four-year “Presidential Election Cycle” as you learn to trade and invest with confidence.

You’ll explore strategies for getting a handle on increased market volatility, identifying past periods of exceptional price movement in the market, as well as streaks of positive and negative performance likely to repeat themselves. You’ll also find:

• Month-by-month strategies that deliver reliably outsized market returns based on cyclical trends
• Key explanations and descriptions of seasonal and annual cycles that consistently repeat themselves, year after year
• Strategies and techniques that promise―and deliver―a sizeable impact on your investing bottom-line

For 57 years, the Almanac has offered savvy investors the freshest data and most insightful advice. Stock Trader’s Almanac 2024 is the comprehensive roadmap to investing eagerly anticipated by day traders, long-term investors, and portfolio managers alike.

Read more

The face of investing has significantly changed in the 30 years since this book’s first publication, but one essential component of the markets has not–human behavior. Whether you’re trading cornerstone commodities or innovative investment products, observing how investors responded to past events through technical analysis is your key to forecasting when to buy and sell in the future. This fully updated fifth edition shows you how to maximize your profits in today’s complex markets by tailoring your application of this powerful tool.

Tens of thousands of individual and professional investors have used the guidance in this book to grow their wealth by understanding, interpreting, and forecasting significant moves in both individual stocks and entire markets. This new edition streamlines its time-honored, profit-driven approach, while updating every chapter with new examples, tables, charts, and comments that reflect the real-world situations you encounter in everyday trading. Required reading among many professionals, this authoritative resource now features:

• Brand-new chapters that analyze and explain secular trends with unique technical indicators that measure investor confidence, as well as an introduction to Pring’s new Special K indicator
• Expanded coverage on the profit-making opportunities ETFs create in international markets, sectors, and commodities
• Practical advice for avoiding false, contratrend signals that may arise in short-term time spans
• Additional material on price patterns, candlestick charts, relative strength, momentum, sentiment indicators, and global stock markets

Properly reading and balancing the variety of indicators used in technical analysis is an art, and no other book better illustrates the repeatable steps you need to take to master it.

When used with patience and discipline, Technical Analysis Explained, Fifth Edition, will make you a better decision maker and increase your chances of greater profits.

Read more

Read more

New chapter by Soros on the secrets to his success along with a new Preface and Introduction.

New Foreword by renowned economist Paul Volcker

“An extraordinary . . . inside look into the decision-making process of the most successful money manager of our time. Fantastic.”
―The Wall Street Journal

George Soros is unquestionably one of the most powerful and profitable investors in the world today. Dubbed by BusinessWeek as “the Man who Moves Markets,” Soros made a fortune competing with the British pound and remains active today in the global financial community. Now, in this special edition of the classic investment book, The Alchemy of Finance, Soros presents a theoretical and practical account of current financial trends and a new paradigm by which to understand the financial market today. This edition’s expanded and revised Introduction details Soros’s innovative investment practices along with his views of the world and world order. He also describes a new paradigm for the “theory of reflexivity” which underlies his unique investment strategies. Filled with expert advice and valuable business lessons, The Alchemy of Finance reveals the timeless principles of an investing legend.

This special edition will feature a new chapter by Soros on the secrets of his success and a new Foreword by the Honorable Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

George Soros (New York, NY) is President of Soros Fund Management and Chief Investment Advisor to Quantum Fund N.V., a $12 billion international investment fund. Besides his numerous ventures in finance, Soros is also extremely active in the worlds of education, culture, and economic aid and development through his Open Society Fund and the Soros Foundation.

Read more

There is a solution–a more intelligent way to invest in funds.

In The Intelligent Fund Investor, experienced portfolio manager and behavioural finance expert Joe Wiggins brings simplicity and clarity to fund investing. Each chapter of this fascinating and highly readable book focuses on a vital element of investing in funds–exploring how and why investors can get it badly wrong, and providing direct, actionable steps for better results.

Joe reveals: why we should avoid investing with star managers; how to decide between active and passive funds; why we should beware of smooth performance and captivating stories; why risk is far more than just volatility; the importance of a long time horizon; and much, much more. Using a combination of stories, empirical evidence and experience, Joe gives all fund investors–active and passive–what they need to reassess their beliefs, understand their biases, and make better investment decisions.

Read more