Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A guide to pricing and hedging (2003) [pdf]

ieor.columbia.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 90 posts

Re: A guide to pricing and hedging (2003) [pdf]

#51

Post by vfc1 »

paulgb wrote: post #43
totalZero wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares? Stop trying to police everyone else's diction. "Men (and boys) may scoff" because this kind of criticism is totally irrelevant to the actual ideas being discussed. I know from experience that just about any person (man or woman) who has done a trading job professionally has had to put up with way worse in the time required to learn how to make money. And in "today's world," a lot of us don't care about the…

> just about any person (man or woman) who has done a trading job professionally has had to put up with way worse in the time required to learn how to make money. Whether or not this is the case, it shouldn't be, and little things like this title subtly reinforce a culture where it is ok.

Exactly, it's about the impact of thousands of these small comments and insinuations over the years have on a group of persons.

If a woman hears and reads this kind of comments over her life, she will end up believing that Finance is not for women and not even choose it as a profession.

Re: A guide to pricing and hedging (2003) [pdf]

#52

Post by JustFinishedBSG »

dtwest wrote: post #47
zdw wrote: post #11

What's the benefit of these fancy financial instruments other than for someone who wants to enjoy a slower, higher stakes version of the roulette wheel at a casino (assuming the Boglehead wisdom that individual stock picking is about as reliable as that)?

Some of these "fancy financial instruments" are not as fancy as you think. For instance, futures and options are a form of insurance. My great grandmother was a farmer and would trade derivatives to insure her crops for the season. Some trader in Chicago can trade this speculatively, but a midwestern farmer has a real world use for the product.

Options were invented for farmers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Option_(finance)#Historical_us...

Re: A guide to pricing and hedging (2003) [pdf]

#53

Post by todd8 »

I was happy to see this because of my interest in the subject, but I can understand that the title is a bit off-putting.

A bit off topic anecdote: a few years ago, while floor trading was still important on the Chicago Board of Trade, I was getting a tour of the floor during trading hours and my guide, a very experienced commodity trader, pointed out a fellow trader that had made the largest trade in history; it was a woman.

Re: A guide to pricing and hedging (2003) [pdf]

#54

Post by JustFinishedBSG »

dmos62 wrote: post #23
otabdeveloper1 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, doubleplusungood. We really need to submit a proper report to the authorities for this flagrant violation of gender correctness rules. Thank you for your vigilance, comrade.

Are you giving the parent comment a soviet communist spin?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak

Re: A guide to pricing and hedging (2003) [pdf]

#55

Post by jchanimal »

CarolineW wrote: post #42
vfc1 wrote: post #33

The title subtly but still obviously implies that finances and investing are men's business, and not women's. I don't see how anyone can deny that. I bet that many women reading this title that work in finance don't appreciate the title one bit. The argument that it's just a joke is not acceptable, because this together with other 1000 similar remarks, or "jokes" or micro-agressions will make women choosing that fiel…

I agree with you entirely, although my comment making pretty much the same point is seeing wild swings in the voting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19980584

There's a lot of incel lurkers here, and they seem to coordinate their actions somewhere else. Typical up/down vote patterns start with sensible upvotes and then a torrent of jealous downvotes.

Re: A guide to pricing and hedging (2003) [pdf]

#56

Post by Luc »

trepanne wrote: post #32
Luc wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understood the reference straight away, but that doesn't reduce how unfortunate it is when one of thousands of other titles could have worked just as well. Especially since the contents don't continue with the 'boys' theme.

It would have been nice if the author had included Boy Scouts style line illustrations... I'm picturing a scoutmaster in knee socks and a kerchief on one knee in front of an easel with an options payout diagram.

I actually bought a French version of one of these books for one of my daughters, focusing on science. But after reading through it a bit it was clear that girls were just not part of the intended public, so it didn't go under the Christmas tree.

The book was nominally about science, but it had a clear second message that I didn't want my 9 year-old girl to receive, with dad's stamp of approval.

Re: A guide to pricing and hedging (2003) [pdf]

#57

Post by levthedev »

zdw wrote: post #11

What's the benefit of these fancy financial instruments other than for someone who wants to enjoy a slower, higher stakes version of the roulette wheel at a casino (assuming the Boglehead wisdom that individual stock picking is about as reliable as that)?

Boglehead investing is generally the safe and correct pick for the average investor, but large corporations, hedge funds, banks, and so on, all require hedging.

A simple example is a corporation that buys goods in China and sells them in the US. This corporation does not want to lose money due to a poor USD/Yuan exchange rate, so they hedge that risk by buying a financial instrument that guarantees them a certain USD/Yuan exchange rate.

Does the average Joe ever need to hedge currency risk? No. But large institutions do. And this is just a single risk; hedging is not just used for exchange rate risk, but also for credit risk, interest rate risk, asset price risk, liquidity risk, disaster risk, political risk, and so on. Any kind of risk can be priced (see for instance, health insurance and car insurance for consumers, a mechanism by which large corporations price the bulk of consumer risk), and there are many trillions of dollars that belong to groups that especially dislike certain risks, and therefore wish to hedge them.

Re: A guide to pricing and hedging (2003) [pdf]

#58

Post by [deleted] »

jchanimal wrote: post #55
CarolineW wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you entirely, although my comment making pretty much the same point is seeing wild swings in the voting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19980584

There's a lot of incel lurkers here, and they seem to coordinate their actions somewhere else. Typical up/down vote patterns start with sensible upvotes and then a torrent of jealous downvotes.

[deleted]

Re: A guide to pricing and hedging (2003) [pdf]

#59

Post by samnwa »

todd8 wrote: post #53

I was happy to see this because of my interest in the subject, but I can understand that the title is a bit off-putting. A bit off topic anecdote: a few years ago, while floor trading was still important on the Chicago Board of Trade, I was getting a tour of the floor during trading hours and my guide, a very experienced commodity trader, pointed out a fellow trader that had made the largest trade in history; it was…

It's almost as if sometimes women do things and then other times men do things! Who would have thunk it??

Re: A guide to pricing and hedging (2003) [pdf]

#60

Post by ibeckermayer »

JustFinishedBSG wrote: post #52
dtwest wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of these "fancy financial instruments" are not as fancy as you think. For instance, futures and options are a form of insurance. My great grandmother was a farmer and would trade derivatives to insure her crops for the season. Some trader in Chicago can trade this speculatively, but a midwestern farmer has a real world use for the product.

Options were invented for farmers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Option_(finance)#Historical_us...

Wow, interesting.
Post reply on HN