"Thulasidas has written an excellent book describing how the modern investment bank works, the individual roles played by the many types of banker and how they interact… or often don't. This is an invaluable book for bank wannabes, recruiters, journalists, those stuck in their silo, educators, regulators, politicians, for almost everyone interested in how this important part of the modern world works. I'm even going to give my mum a copy, although I don't think it will reassure her about the safety of her pension."
Paul Wilmott, mathematician and quant
“If only this book had been written much earlier, many banks and financial institutions would be spared the countless heartaches, frustrations and wasted investments into poorly thought out and badly designed quantitative platforms; and its inevitable toll on the business. The book is exceedingly useful for quant professionals who want to see the forest beyond the trees but more importantly, I think it should be mandatory reading for strategic decision makers in the structured products/exotics trading spaces. Unlike the typical 'big picture' book, I find Thulasidas's approach refreshing in that he provides tangible examples, for example in terms of competing architectures and computing patterns. This enables the reader to clearly understand and concretely grasp the consequence of each design decision as opposed to being forced to decipher fuzzy concepts. I have no doubt that this book will become a classic.”
Alvin Harvey Kam, Exotics Trader, Global Commodities Citigroup
"Dr Thulasidas opens a window into an esoteric domain in the Banking world which is rarely understood and mostly misinterpreted. The subject insights he possesses help a structured style of narration navigating the reader through abstract material with ease and adding a learning touch as well. A compelling read!!!!!"
C.Krishna Kumar, Advisor to the Chairman, National Bank of Egypt
"Dr. Thulasidas clarifies the obscure and interconnected world of quantitative finance, exotics trading and financial computing. A must read for the thinking professional, this work will prove valuable to those embarking on a career in any aspect of trading - from business associates to trading system architects, and from quantitative analysts to structurers and traders."
Babek Saber, Retired Global Head, Commodity Structured Products Trading, Standard Chartered
Principles of Quantitative Development, published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, deals with the issues around designing a trading platform where you can quickly plug in quantitative pricing models and handle the whole front office - middle office - settlement chain of a trade life cycle.Designing a trading platform is more than a technical challenge. Primarily, it is a challenge in understanding the business processes around the trade lifecycle and the organizational value chain. Although specific to the institution, these processes tend to have commonalities across the industry. Focusing on the common features, the book will highlight the overlap between the big picture of how a trade flows through the systems, and the role of a quantitative professional in the organization. The book will, therefore, deal with the typical lifecycle of a trade as well as the technical aspects of platform design. To illustrate the technical aspects, the book will contain a fully functional pricing program and exercises based on it.
All professionals involved in the trade work flow (the front office quant and development groups as well as the middle office processing and the back end settlement teams) will benefit from the insights presented in the book. The book will also be of tremendous help to the growing number of highly skilled domain experts stepping into the field of quantitative finance. They need a quick-start overview of the lay of the land so that they can hit the ground running.
Working as a senior quantitative professional, I realized that most of the quantitative analysts and developers (especially the junior ones) lack an understanding of or appreciation for the intricacies of the trade booking process. They go about their daily work narrowly focusing on their immediate tasks, all too often completely ignoring the contexts. Yet, in order to succeed in their profession, they need an understanding of the contexts of the trade work flow, and the processes they have to service during a trade life cycle.
I published an article for the Wilmott magazine addressing these issues in Sept 2008. While writing it, I realized that it was a much bigger topic and that a book on it could benefit a large and growing number of professionals. The realization came about from the enthusiastic response my article received when I sent it around for feedback. And when Wiley asked me to consider writing a book, I proposed Principles of Quantitative Development as an offshoot of that article.
It is available in bookstores starting July/August 2010. You can order it from most online stores, or find it in your local stores.
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