Pricing the Future

Finance, Physics, and the 300-Year Journey to the Black-Scholes Equation

De: George Szpiro

Narrado por: Brian Troxell

Options have been traded for hundreds of years, but investment decisions were based on gut feelings until the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of the Black-Scholes options pricing model in 1973 ushered in the era of the quants. Wall Street would never be the same.

In Pricing the Future, financial economist George G. Szpiro tells the fascinating stories of the pioneers of mathematical finance who conducted the search for the elusive options pricing formula. From the broker's assistant who published the first mathematical explanation of financial markets to Albert Einstein and other scientists who looked for a way to explain the movement of atoms and molecules, Pricing the Future retraces the historical and intellectual developments that ultimately led to the widespread use of mathematical models to drive investment strategies on Wall Street.

©2011 George G. Szpiro (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"One of the major intellectual achievements of the 20th century was the theory of option pricing. This is its story, and it’s absolutely fascinating." (Robert P. Inman, Richard K. Mellon Professor of Finance and Economics, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania)

"[A] fascinating historical account.... Those who think finance is a science will be surprised by the serendipitous events that delayed the discovery of the option-pricing formula by 73 years; those who think finance is an art will be shocked by the deep connections between option-pricing, physics, and probability theory." (Andrew Lo, Harris & Harris Group Professor of Finance and Director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

"Szpiro’s tale should fascinate readers who follow the markets." ( Booklist)

awesome book

coming from an engineering background I found this book extremely insightful. highly recommend for anyone interested in finance.

Facinating story

I bought this book a few months months but didn't really get into it. I returned to the book recently and was captivated. This is one of the best books i have listened to in a long time but it is not an easy book to follow since it touches on very complicated PhD level mathematical concepts. Although complicated, the author manages to take most of the concepts apart and present them in an easy to understand way. The book takes you all the way through the history that resulted in the Black Scholes formula and it includes a botanist experimenting with pollen, a drunken sailor hanging on to a lamppost and a bell. Chapter 7 includes an easy to understand but detailed explanation of the Black Scholes formula and is worth the purchase price alone. You will have to focus but it is worth the effort.

This quant gives it 4 stars!

This was a really great book in particular for those that are intrested in understanding the history and importance of quantitative finance in today's world. I throwing enjoyed the history and the explanations and applaud the author for doing truly great research. I only wish there were more to the criticisms of the black scholes model and gaussian distributions but this is still an incredibly solid work!

A great listen!

The author presents a fantastic marriage of finance, scientific pursuit, and historical link between them that many would overlook!

Quite Intresting!!

This book gives a good inside on futures pricing. I would suggest it to all..