Quantitative finance : a simuation based introduction using Excel

Preface: It is necessary to thank many people at the end of a big project like writing a book. First, my thanks go to my patient editor Sunil Nair and his editorial assistants Rachel Holt and Sarah Gelson. Two anonymous reviewers made very thorough and useful comments on an earlier manuscript. Tao Luo and Sharon Wang typed and made figures for many versions of this book. Tao's valuable comments, mastery of visual basic, and untiring commitment were a particular help in both of the final pushes to completing this project. I have benefitted from teaching this material to many students over many years, beginning with many insightful master's and PhD students. Classroom versions of this content has been taught to the actuarial science, financial modeling, and applied mathematics students of AM3613b, AM9578b, AS9022a, SS4521 g, SS9521b, and SS3520b at Western University, to the HBA students of Bus4486 and MBA students of Bus9443 at the Richard Ivey School of Business, and to students at a course on interest rate models given at the Bank of Canada. Greg Sullivan and Kirk Cooper, then at Deutsche Bank Canada, were my first teachers in trading floor quant finance. Chris Essex, Henning Rasmussen, and Mark Reesor at Western, Adam Metzler at Wilfrid Laurier, Matt Thompson at Queens, Lindsay Anderson at Cornell, and Alejandro Garcia at the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, have all helped shape my thinking. Of course, any errors or omissions in this book are mine alone. The final thanks go to my wife Christine and my sons Liam and Shawn, without whom none of this would be worth doing.