Derivatives and Beyond

Volume 1 established the principle; Volume 2 puts it to work. Building on the foundations of arbitrage, market mechanics, and cost-of-carry pricing, this concluding volume takes the reader into the intellectually richest territory of modern finance: options, credit, swaps, and risk.

Here you will learn to read an option through the lens of moneyness, architect spreads, straddles, and butterflies that express precise views on direction and volatility, and derive option prices from first principles - first with binomial trees, then with the celebrated Black-Scholes-Merton model and its Greeks. From there, the book turns to the instruments that reshaped - and nearly broke - the global financial system: credit default swaps and collateralised debt obligations, examined through the anatomy of the 2008 crisis. Chapters on swaps and interest-rate derivatives, Value-at-Risk and the Basel capital framework, and a closing tour of real options, employee stock options, and energy and weather derivatives complete the toolkit.

Throughout, the same discipline holds: every formula is derived from an economic argument, every model is stress-tested against real market episodes, and every chapter is reinforced with worked examples, solved problems, and graded practice sets.

Two identical payoffs, one price. Volume 2 shows just how far that one idea can go.