Volume 19, Number 2 Article by Sankarshan Basu June, 2007
Futures Market: Made Easy with 250 Questions and Answers : By Sunil K Parameswaran, Tata McGraw-Hill, 2006, pp 331 (excluding :
This book by Parameswaran is his second offering, following the highly successful title Futures Market: Theory and Practice. With the introduction of futures trade in India, particularly the successful commodity futures market in India, there is a huge demand for books on this topic for Indian markets. Most books on derivatives deal with futures trading as just one among other topics and are not always accessible to the Indian audience.
While Parameshwaran’s earlier book was more of a theoretical exposition of the futures market, his current offering is a very straightforward book, easily understood by all segments of the players in the commodity markets (traders, exchanges and academics involved in commodity futures research). The format of the book is both novel and functional – it deals with all the theoretical details using a question answer format. This makes the book very useful for Indian academics as well as practitioners. The other major advancement of this book in relation to the author’s earlier book is that the level of mathematical proficiency required for understanding this book is fairly minimal – this will definitely widen the appeal of the book. All those involved in various aspects of the futures markets are not necessarily highly proficient in mathematics, nor do they need to be. This book takes care of both sets of readers – for the highly mathematically oriented reader, it serves as handbook for easy reference while for the non-mathematically oriented reader, it provides all the necessary information about the futures market and its operations from a non-mathematical view point.
Like any other book, this book is also organised into chapters. While the level of intensity is slowly built up as one progresses through the chapters in a sequential manner, the quicker reader can begin reading at any point without losing the essence of the information. Importantly, every chapter ends with a set of questions to test the understanding of the reader, with a key to the questions provided at the end of the book. Further each chapter also contains a set of references for further reading – this is directed towards the more academically oriented reader and appropriately so, as it avoids over-burdening, and thereby putting off, the practitioner reading the book. To my mind, the most interesting part of the book (and what to a large extent differentiates it from most others of this genre) is the last chapter, which deals with and highlights the various trading strategies that can be used in the market for futures trading by players in the market. This really lends a practical value to the book and causes it to stand out in the field.
Overall, I would recommend this book very highly to all those who have any interest in the futures market – be it from an academic view point or a practical view point. It will serve as an important addition to their collection and be of real value.
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