Johnson, Derivatives Markets and Analysis

R. Stafford Johnson’s Derivatives Markets and Analysis (Bloomberg/Wiley, 2017) is part of the Bloomberg Financial Series. As such, the Bloomberg terminal, and how to use it, plays a central role in the text.

The book is a wonderful resource, however, even for the financial professional or student without access to a Bloomberg terminal. Johnson, a professor of finance at Xavier University, has put together more than 750 pages of information about and case studies involving futures and forwards, options, and financial swaps. He includes problems and questions, along with Bloomberg exercises.

Although Johnson starts with the basics, quickly enough he takes the reader into the complexities of hedging. For instance, in the case of options, in one chapter he explains the standard strategies and some defensive follow-up strategies. In the next chapter he discusses ways to hedge stock portfolio positions—by creating a floor or a cap for a stock portfolio using index options and by using range forward contracts. He also discusses hedging currency, commodity, and fixed-income positions with options.

The book has a section on option pricing, with chapters on option boundary conditions and fundamental price relations, the binomial pricing model, the Black-Scholes pricing model, pricing non-stock options and futures options, and pricing bond and interest rate options.

Johnson’s book is not for the average retail investor. But, with its mix of theory and practice, it is exceedingly useful both as a textbook and as a reference book.