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“I had been in derivatives for over 25 years. Many traders hadn't been born when I stumbled accidentally into the arcane world of derivatives trading. The Indonesians were at the fag end of that career. How did I get there? I had followed the money. I had ridden the tide and currents of financial markets. I had not known very much then. Even now I only knew the many unknowns. How did I get here? It was a very long story. Send Traders, Guns and Money is that story…..”Warren Buffet once labelled derivatives “financial weapons of mass destruction”. Unlike the military kind, financial WMD are not hard to find. Many great companies use them. These businesses use derivatives to make money or protect them from risk. It’s a simple case of greed or fear. Or is it?In derivatives, whoever you are, there are things that you don’t know that you don’t know. These are the real risks of derivatives. They’re generally left to the client to discover. So, if you’re entering the dazzling world of derivatives, ask yourself this: What do I know? What do I need to know? What don’t I know? What am I doing?You can find the answers in Traders, Guns & Money, a sensational and controversial first-person account of the business of derivatives trading and the financial products industry in the spirit of Liar’s Poker. It is a true insider’s view of the business of trading and marketing derivatives for a living. It details the nature of the business, the players, how money is made and lost, and the deceptions that underlie the entire process.Funny and poignant, and written in a wry and wickedly comic style, the book provides the ordinary reader with an insight into the seeming madness that underlies financial markets and the out-of-control process that is trading in complex financial products that few understand.Traders, Guns & Money throws light on the culture, games, and pure deceptions played out every day in trading rooms around the world, and played out with other people’s money. It describes the processes by which a small group of gifted, if avaricious, individuals parlay their knowledge of the arcane world of financial products into wealth, leaving shareholders, clients, regulators, and the tax paying ordinary public to bear most of the risk.This is the story of how one set of clients discovered the perils of unknowns in a derivatives deal. This tale will leave you amazed, and this book will make it all clear.In the sometimes dazzling world of derivatives, Traders Guns & Money shows you how we got here and tells it how it is. Go on, follow the money.An accessible companion and a wise counsel, Traders, Guns & Money weaves together three core themes:Known unkowns: if you’re entering the dazzling world of derivatives, ask yourself this: What do I know? What do I need to know? What don’t I know? What am I doing? This book will make it all clear.Follow the money: an insider’s, expert witness account of the rise and rules of the world of derivatives. This book will show you how we got here and tell it how it isSend traders guns & money: the story of how one set of clients discovered the perils of unknowns in a derivatives deal . This tale will leave you amazed, but wiser."Ever since Warren Buffett memorably described derivatives as "financial weapons of mass destruction" there has been a thriller waiting to be written about them. Derivatives have frightened otherwise right-thinking people for some time. In part this reflects a natural tendency to fear what we do not understand." Financial Times
This is a fascinating book and a good read. Mr. Das does a great job of explaining in simple terms how some fairly complex financial instruments work and he does it with style. He is also an entertaining cynic, and he takes the reader through the underside of the banking industry in a very readable way.In some ways this is absolute comedy, and for a while I was caught up in the amusement of seeing a "Flashman" weaving his way through the world of high finance, but ultimately the tales of mendacity and sheer greed, unaccompanied by any focus on value to customers, tend to wear me down. Many of us knew the risks of these products, but credulous buyers bought the pitch whole.For a quality book, and this is one, there are a few miscues. Any book that mentions Warren Buffett as often as this one does (nine times in the index) should at least spell his name correctly.Also, Das does correctly note that the origin of currency swaps and interest rate swaps in the mid 1970's - the basis of modern derivatives --arose out of the parallel loan market (at 34-37), but he gets the first parties and transactions wrong. Starting in early 1976, a series of such agreements was done by Monsanto Company, the first of which was with Imperial Chemical Industries Limited, quickly followed by others with Rank Xerox, Hanson Trust and others. Interestingly, these were invented by a small group of lawyers in a London conference room to solve a legal problem and in fact to reduce risk - with no involvement by investment bankers. Of course, Goldman Sachs, who represented Monsanto (and maybe ICI too), saw a product that it could sell to others, and the market was off and running, leading to all kinds of variations and new risks. How do I know this? I still have a copy of the original swap. See my article on the origin of derivatives at [...]
