RE: Where should a beginner begin?

Posted by Perissin Francesco on
URL: http://quantlib.414.s1.nabble.com/Where-should-a-beginner-begin-tp2168p2169.html




Ciao Michele

>Which would be the best way to quickly get familiar with QL?

I think that the first issue is getting familiar with financial knowledge,
starting with some of the books whose titles are reported in the web site
and previous e-mails. I can suggest the famous Hull, and later "Implementing
derivatives models" by Clewlow and Strickland. THe first gives a sound
financial background, the second is full of 'real life' examples and of
pseudo code.

When you have a complete idea of all the things that are involved in the
pricing of a derivative, you could start using the library. With
'derivative' it's usual to mean 'option', but you could even start with
something simpler, like futures or swaps. In the latter case the pricing
reduces to the calculation of forward rates and discounts from a yield
curve, with some date rules added (it seems trivial but it is not, trust
me!!!).
But all depends on your interest, for example if you were interested in
equity options, you could jump the above things and run directly to options.
But I discourage you from doing so, because at some stage you could be stuck
in interest rate problems (for example, you could be seriously in trouble in
determining the risk free rate for long dated options, without a clear idea
of an interest rate swap).

For the other questions I think that there are other guys which could give
you complete answers...

Good luck!!
Francesco

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