Trading Pairs + CD: Capturing Profits and Hedging Risk with Statistical Arbitrage Strategies
Mark Whistler
Mark Whistler - a 'licensed securities broker', is the only qualifier for him writing this book. The book is poorly conceived, with numerous typos and bad grammar. There is little to justify the high price of this book. Given the high price of this work, Wiley could at least have employed a decent proof reader. A lot of it is just fill. Pages of pointless web addresses everybody knows about.. (yahoo, etc), rating of economic stats, and needless chapters about technical analysis, and option basics. If you're at the level of wanting to arb trade, you have that stuff down cold. It appears hastily put together with little sequence between the chapters. He even admits he changed course close to the publisher's deadline to include a real live trade (APA/APC), which reads more like a blog. It goes on and on. Do I want to hear about him standing on his desk screaming his head off when a trade got legs and went in his direction? At one point he admits that the pairs trading community focus on ratios, yet he talks about differentials instead. No, I am sure the guy knows how to put on and take off stat arb trades, he just doesn't know how to teach it. An author he isn't. He doesn't offer any kind of structure for the beginning pairs trader to build on. Most of the stuff in the book you can get off the I.net. for free. The one really useful chapter was Chapter 8 'Understanding Correlations' which was written by somebody else,(Steven Price).
There is little to justify this book's high price. It is not a serious work. Don't waste your money.
