1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Close to useless, 2006-02-11
Sometimes reads like a smorgasbord of topics and facts. Don't see the key topics and themese show through in a consistent manner. Never even talks about other models and risk management/hedging challenges in these respects...
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
The best of a very bad bunch, 2003-11-10
It's amazing that nobody has written a decent book on convertible bonds. This is the best in a very weak selection.
The book essentially starts at Chapter 6. If he wanted to write a book on modelling in excel he should have thougt about doing it before Jackson and Staunton (Modelling in Excel and vba). However, there isn't any vba here. How another reviewer can say that the pace accelerates enough to keep the attention of the expert is crazy, Chapters 1-5 are very irritating; as I say, they might be fine in another book.
The author's avoidance of vba is a drawback. Why not? It is a logical thing to do.
In the last couple of chapters, the author stops doing excel and just shows the graphs. He even freely refers to a embeded tree spreadsheet and then nonchalently points out that it isn't on the disk provided. Why not?
The real reason is that the binomial method becomes completely unworkable as soon as one introduces complications. One needs to use finite difference methods. FDMs are not even mentioned in this book. The author places his presentation as the state of the art, it isn't. I learned more in 4 pages of one of Wilmott's books (Mr. Numerical DE Solver) [Paul WIlmott on Quantitative Finance, section on convertible bonds] than I did from this book.
If you are interested in building models of convertibles, that can take into account any but the most vanilla features, this is not the place. For a conceptual non-quantitative overview, fine.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent., 2002-06-17
This is a very good book. Connolly starts from the beginning, assuming you know nothing, but accelerates at just the right rate to hang on to beginners and not to annoy people who already know the basics. Admittedly, if you're a quant you'll know all this stuff (anyway, if you're already a quant you shouldn't need to buy a book on the subject in the first place). If you're not a quant, it's a fine introduction to how to model convertibles. In fact, there's enough information here for you to have a go at writing your own toy model that takes into account most of the complexities of CBs (including puts and resets), although you'd be a trifle crazy - or extremely confident - to start trading off a model you implemented *only* having read this book.This is an excellent book for anyone who is a user of CB models, who understands the inputs and outputs, and who wants to know more about what's going on inside the model "black box".
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Useful, practical, essential, but MORE Please!, 2001-08-15
Connolly has written a useful, practical book for those who are attempting to price these (increasingly) complex instruments. For more abstract or academic treatments of the topic, seek other sources and the innumerable academic journals of quant finance. But for a nut-work �gotta-price-this-bugger-�cause-my-boss-asked-me-to-and-I�m-the-quant-guy-in-the-shop� this guide, while not strictly a �cookbook,� is indispensable. Although it begins at a relatively basic level, it clearly and concisely explains every technique from the simple (y = mx + b) and then step-by-step ratchets up to the Excel-samuri level (MIN and MAX tests after multiple operations of option pricing trees (bi-nomial and tri-nomial)).
I limited my rating to four stars, however, because Connolly only mentions in passing the available (expensive) software-house products that do many of the same things his example spreadsheets do. Fin software needs critics, and I can think of no one better placed than the author to examine them and give front-line quant analysts his views.
In addition, like most worker bees, I try never to reinvent the wheel (programming in C++ and VB or anything else for this kinda thing is undiluted soul-destroying tedium), but at the same time want to thoroughly check out the foundational theory and techniques someone applied before I risk my career on someone else�s work. In this case, a good list of the academic sources and current financial literature on the topic would have been a useful and welcome addition to this slender volume.
I suppose a final criticism is that we have all seen the exponential growth of credit derivatives in the past few years. Connolly�s next edition will need to address the topic of credit derivatives in relation to convertible bonds, as their use in combination with CBs provides alternate hedging, investment, and speculative strategies not explicitly considered in this book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
not enough, 2001-08-08
A good start, but not enough detail or complexity. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like there is anything better.