Quantitative Methods for Investment Analysis

I read this book in preperation for my CFA exam. I found it very useful. It covers most of the quantitative methods you need in finance. The explanations are very good. The book has plenty of solved exercises on every topic.

This text is a great improvement over the material the CFA program used in the mid-90s. Since it is intended to provide a survey of basic statistics and their applications in finance, it would be wrong to expect a deep treatise on any one subject. There are many real world applications used to describe the concepts tackled in this book. The learning outcomes listed at the beginning of each chapter provide a road map for the reader so that all salient points will be absorbed. Will this book be the only one you will need to become a quantitative analyst? No, but it is a great starting point. If you are desiring more depth perhaps a review of the abstracts on the AIMR website would lead you more involved, scholarly efforts.

There is a large body of knowledge related to quantitative analysis, and I really love how quickly this book manages to convey so much of it to the reader. The authors rapidly build on knowledge in the chapter text, allowing you to learn quickly. They also provide boxed examples and end-of-chapter practice problems for those readers needing to carefully review particular topics. You'll find yourself speeding through concepts like discounting, distributions, hypothesis testing, and much more as you read through the pages. I'm a little embarrassed to say that before reading this book I often created computer simulations to assess a distribution of outcomes - simply because I never learned the math that would allow me to find my answers quickly on a calculator. Today I retreat to computer simulations much less often, and have reaped large dividends on saved time and resources.Whether you are working to obtain the CFA designation, or are simply looking for a terrific desk resource for quantitative analysis, I recommend this book to you.A more complete list of topics covered:Discounting and rates of returnStatistics, probabilities, and distributionsEstimation and hypothesis testingRegression analysisPortfolio analysis