Review of Risk: The New Management Imperative in Finance (Hardcover)

Mr. Gleason explains, without using "Greek letters and mathematical formulas, how risk management works" and shows why it has becomeimperative for financial services firms to establish global risk managementprocesses, which "allow firms to know, control, and accurately chargefor the financial risks they are taking."

After a brief overview ofthe full spectrum of financial and nonfinancial risks, two major sectionsof the book are dedicated to market and credit risk, how they differ andwhat they share. Market risk management is examined along product lines,commodities, currencies, fixed-income markets, equities, by describing thedrivers of price and volatility as well as available hedging tools. Thediscussion of credit risk outlines, at first, the challenges of findingmeasurement tools to accurately assess credit risk, and then describescredit risk management techniques in the trading and traditional lendingmarkets.In trading, the trend has been towards managing credit risk assettlement and pre-settlement risk. The advantages and disadvantages ofusing Monte Carlo simulations to measure pre-settlement exposure on aglobal basis are examined. Mr. Gleason then suggests to replace the currentpractice of trading limits with charging traders for credit. This requiresanalytical tools to quantify the credit cost of a deal. The section ontraditional lending describes how this business is being revolutionized bynew analytical tools that measure default probabilities and defaultcorrelations, loan securitization and the swapping of credit exposure, andthe shift, for banks, from being credit investors to becoming creditintermediaries.

Mr. Gleason then describes the various portfolio measuresof risk that have emerged in the 1990s and points out the work that remainsto be done: to develop tools to "measure risk from extreme marketmoves and illiquid markets." Finally, the author describes howoperational and organizational issues, with data being the biggest problem,will make the transformation to global risk management processeschallenging. The discussion ends with an overview of prerequisites forsuccess and pitfalls to avoid.

The book provides a concise and clearlywritten overview of and/or introduction to global financial risk managementchallenges and solution options. As such, it will be particularly useful tothose non-risk management professionals who are being asked to participatein the establishment of global risk management processes Mr. Gleason'sexperience as a risk management consultant can be sensed throughout thebook, his enthusiasm for the subject becomes particularly palpable andcontagious in the final sections.



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Review of Navigating the Financial Blogosphere: How to Benefit from Free Information on the Internet (Hardcover)

This was a nice little book written by a young professional who works as a wealth manager. It's a personal finance or young person's financial planning book. I liked the way the book presented the material in clear and digestible snippets. I read a book not too long ago that was similar in format. See Blogging and Podcasting (ISBN: 1419584359). In both books the authors promote themselves through blogging. And instead of writing their books as a separate and distinct activity as compared to their blogs, they lift a lot of their content from their blogs and spruce it up a little before calling it a book.

This book has 27 chapters divided up into the following four sections:

1. First perspectives on money (chapters 1-5)
2. Building wealth requires planing (chapters 6-13)
3. Living in a financial world (chapters 14-21)
4. Think long-term about money management (chapters 22-27)

The chapters are short which is why I equate them to spruced-up blog entries. And the number of chapters is large, another reason this book has the feel of a blog rather than something that was put together originally as a book.

The book is well-written and easy to read and follow. It cites much of its content to Web sites and links that can be found online. If you want to learn about some of the things the Internet has to offer regarding personal finance and financial planning, then I highly recommend this book. If you are just wanting to familiarize yourself with personal finance and financial planning, then this would be a nice book to read, too. However, it's not a treatise on the subject. 5 stars!



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Review of The Harriman House Book of Investing Rules: Collected Wisdom from the World's Top 150 Investors (Hardcover)

"The Global-Investor Book of Investing Rules" is like going to a cocktail party with 150 prominent investment authors and analysts and pumping them for information.We get to hear from Bob Prechter, Marc Faber (a/k/a "Dr. Doom"), Paul Wilmott, and many others.The multiplicity of approaches is excellent:some of the subjects are stock investors, others concentrate on commodities; some use technical analysis, others are fundamentalists.Dr. Faber's one point of advice is one of the best that I have ever read in a financial book:he suggests that consumption of wealth is always an option--buy a good book, go out to dinner with family and friends.It is a shame that such a wonderful book is already out of print, but luckily you can buy a used copy very cheap.It's a bargain!



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