In this section you can find comments on my daily-life observations. Don’t take it too seriously but feel free to engage in a discussion.
First and foremost, I want to share some books that I think are relevant to my way of thinking and that influence my teaching process. Feel free to go through them and drop me an email if you want to share your views on the topic. I enclose a list presented in random order to avoid the hassle of ranking them, as their relative importance may change over time—or, as we say, it is stochastic. This selection is arbitrary and rather incomplete, but still, these books are inspiring.
By far, the best book on this list is Gödel, Escher, Bach, due to its intriguing nature and its tendency to question the “obvious.” I am sure that anyone can find a challenging chapter among its 700+ pages. The second on my list is Early Retirement Extreme, which is a great handbook for understanding the contemporary world and getting as much as we can from it. I like the sarcastic style in which it is written and the author’s insightful comments on how to master the system instead of being a slave to it. Its author, Jacob Lund Fisker, writes a blog, and you can find a link to it if you are interested.
Three books are by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, including The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, and Antifragile. Reading them is quite an intellectual journey and good material for rethinking reality. Against the Gods, by Peter L. Bernstein, is a must-read for risk professionals, who may be surprised to learn that active risk management is a relatively new concept for humanity.
Last but not least, two well-known handbooks on derivatives written by Robert L. McDonald and John C. Hull. As I mainly teach derivatives, my “laundry list” of books would be incomplete without them.
Enjoy the reading!
