Our books selection

Skills


Quantitative trading strategies—known to many as “black boxes”—have gained a reputation of being difficult to explain and even harder to understand. While there is a certain level of complexity to this approach, with the right guidance, you can successfully overcome potential obstacles and begin to excel in this arena.

That’s why expert fund manager Rishi Narang has created Inside the Black Box. In a straightforward, nontechnical style—supplemented by real-world examples and informative anecdotes—this reliable resource takes you on a detailed tour through the black box. It skillfully sheds light upon the work that “quants” do, lifting the veil of mystery around quantitative trading and allowing anyone interested in doing so to understand quants and their strategies.

Divided into three comprehensive parts, Insider the Black Box opens with an accessible introduction to the discipline of quantitative trading and quickly moves on to demonstrate that what many call a black box is in fact transparent, intuitively sensible, and readily understandable. Along the way, it also explains how quant strategies can fit into your portfolio and why they are so important.

Skills


Algorithmic trading and Direct Market Access (DMA) are important tools helping both buy and sell-side traders to achieve best execution (Note: the focus is on institutional sized orders, not those of individuals/retail traders).

This book starts from the ground up to provide detailed explanations of both these techniques:

  • An introduction to the different types of execution is followed by a review of market microstructure theory. Throughout the book examples from empirical studies bridge the gap between the theory and practice of trading.
  • Orders are the fundamental building blocks for any strategy. Market, limit, stop, hidden, iceberg, peg, routed and immediate-or-cancel orders are all described with illustrated examples.
  • Trading algorithms are explained and compared using charts to show potential trading patterns. TWAP, VWAP, Percent of Volume, Minimal Impact, Implementation Shortfall, Adaptive Shortfall, Market On Close and Pairs trading algorithms are all covered, together with common variations.
  • Transaction costs can have a significant effect on investment returns. An in-depth example shows how these may be broken down into constituents such as market impact, timing risk, spread and opportunity cost and other fees.
  • Coverage includes all the major asset classes, from equities to fixed income, foreign exchange and derivatives. Detailed overviews for each of the world's major markets are provided in the appendices.
  • Order placement and execution tactics are covered in more detail, as well as potential enhancements (such as short-term forecasts), for those interested in the specifics of implementing these strategies.
  • Cutting edge applications such as portfolio and multi-asset trading are also considered, as are handling news and data mining/artificial intelligence.
Skills


Algorithmic Trading is an insightful book on quantitative trading written by a seasoned practitioner. What sets this book apart from many others in the space is the emphasis on real examples as opposed to just theory. Concepts are not only described, they are brought to life with actual trading strategies, which give the reader insight into how and why each strategy was developed, how it was implemented, and even how it was coded. This book is a valuable resource for anyone looking to create their own systematic trading strategies and those involved in manager selection, where the knowledge contained in this book will lead to a more informed and nuanced conversation with managers.

Skills


This book is about trading, the people who trade securities and contracts, the marketplaces where they trade, and the rules that govern it. Readers will learn about investors, brokers, dealers, arbitrageurs, retail traders, day traders, rogue traders, and gamblers; exchanges, boards of trade, dealer networks, ECNs (electronic communications networks), crossing markets, and pink sheets. Also covered in this text are single price auctions, open outcry auctions, and brokered markets limit orders, market orders, and stop orders. Finally, the author covers the areas of program trades, block trades, and short trades, price priority, time precedence, public order precedence, and display precedence, insider trading, scalping, and bluffing, and investing, speculating, and gambling.

Skills


While institutional traders continue to implement quantitative (or algorithmic) trading, many independent traders have wondered if they can still challenge powerful industry professionals at their own game? The answer is "yes," and in Quantitative Trading, Dr. Ernest Chan, a respected independent trader and consultant, will show you how. Whether you're an independent "retail" trader looking to start your own quantitative trading business or an individual who aspires to work as a quantitative trader at a major financial institution, this practical guide contains the information you need to succeed.

Skills


This book describes the important ideas in a variety of fields such as medicine, biology, finance, and marketing in a common conceptual framework. While the approach is statistical, the emphasis is on concepts rather than mathematics. Many examples are given, with a liberal use of colour graphics. It is a valuable resource for statisticians and anyone interested in data mining in science or industry. The book's coverage is broad, from supervised learning (prediction) to unsupervised learning. The many topics include neural networks, support vector machines, classification trees and boosting---the first comprehensive treatment of this topic in any book.

This major new edition features many topics not covered in the original, including graphical models, random forests, ensemble methods, least angle regression & path algorithms for the lasso, non-negative matrix factorisation, and spectral clustering. There is also a chapter on methods for "wide'' data (p bigger than n), including multiple testing and false discovery rates.

Skills


This is the first textbook on pattern recognition to present the Bayesian viewpoint. The book presents approximate inference algorithms that permit fast approximate answers in situations where exact answers are not feasible. It uses graphical models to describe probability distributions when no other books apply graphical models to machine learning. No previous knowledge of pattern recognition or machine learning concepts is assumed. Familiarity with multivariate calculus and basic linear algebra is required, and some experience in the use of probabilities would be helpful though not essential as the book includes a self-contained introduction to basic probability theory.

Skills


Through a series of recent breakthroughs, deep learning has boosted the entire field of machine learning. Now, even programmers who know close to nothing about this technology can use simple, efficient tools to implement programs capable of learning from data. This practical book shows you how.

By using concrete examples, minimal theory, and two production-ready Python frameworks—scikit-learn and TensorFlow—author Aurélien Géron helps you gain an intuitive understanding of the concepts and tools for building intelligent systems. You’ll learn a range of techniques, starting with simple linear regression and progressing to deep neural networks. With exercises in each chapter to help you apply what you’ve learned, all you need is programming experience to get started.

  • Explore the machine learning landscape, particularly neural nets
  • Use scikit-learn to track an example machine-learning project end-to-end
  • Explore several training models, including support vector machines, decision trees, random forests, and ensemble methods
  • Use the TensorFlow library to build and train neural nets
  • Dive into neural net architectures, including convolutional nets, recurrent nets, and deep reinforcement learning
  • Learn techniques for training and scaling deep neural nets
  • Apply practical code examples without acquiring excessive machine learning theory or algorithm details