Risk Management

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

With the stock market breaking records almost daily, leaving longtime market analysts shaking their heads and revising their forecasts, a study of the concept of risk seems quite timely. Peter Bernstein has written a comprehensive history of man's efforts to understand risk and probability, beginning with early gamblers in ancient Greece, continuing through the 17th-century French mathematicians Pascal and Fermat and up to modern chaos theory. Along the way he demonstrates that understanding risk underlies everything from game theory to bridge-building to winemaking.

A Business Week, New York Times Business, and USA Today Bestseller

"Ambitious and readable . . . an engaging introduction to the oddsmakers, whom Bernstein regards as true humanists helping to release mankind from the choke holds of superstition and fatalism." -The New York Times

"An extraordinarily entertaining and informative book." -The Wall Street Journal

"A lively panoramic book . . . Against the Gods sets up an ambitious premise and then delivers on it." -Business Week

"Deserves to be, and surely will be, widely read." -The Economist

"[A] challenging book, one that may change forever the way people think about the world." -Worth

"No one else could have written a book of such central importance with so much charm and excitement." -Robert Heilbroner author, The Worldly Philosophers

"With his wonderful knowledge of the history and current manifestations of risk, Peter Bernstein brings us Against the Gods. Nothing like it will come out of the financial world this year or ever. I speak carefully: no one should miss it." -John Kenneth Galbraith Professor of Economics Emeritus, Harvard University

In this unique exploration of the role of risk in our society, Peter Bernstein argues that the notion of bringing risk under control is one of the central ideas that distinguishes modern times from the distant past. Against the Gods chronicles the remarkable intellectual adventure that liberated humanity from oracles and soothsayers by means of the powerful tools of risk management that are available to us today.

"An extremely readable history of risk." -Barron's

"Fascinating . . . this challenging volume will help you understand the uncertainties that every investor must face." -Money

"A singular achievement." -Times Literary Supplement

"There's a growing market for savants who can render the recondite intelligibly-witness Stephen Jay Gould (natural history), Oliver Sacks (disease), Richard Dawkins (heredity), James Gleick (physics), Paul Krugman (economics)-and Bernstein would mingle well in their company." -The Australian

Trading Options For Dummies (For Dummies (Business & Personal Finance))

Thinking of trading options, but not sure where to start? Trading Options For Dummies starts you from the beginning with clear, step-by-step advice on how to use top option strategies to reduce your risk while boosting your income and enlarging your retirement portfolio with index, equity, and ETF options.

This plain-English guide explains the common types of options and helps you choose the right ones for your investing needs. You find out how to weigh option costs and benefits, combine options to reduce risk, and build a strategy that allows you to gain no matter what the market may bring. You’ll learn the basics of market and sector analysis and what to look for when trying out a new option strategy. You’ll also find what you need to know about options contract specifications and mechanics. Discover how to:

• Understand option contracts and orders
• Determine and manage your risk
• Guard your assets using options
• Trade options on securities exchanges
• Protect your rights and satisfy your contract obligations
• Target sectors using technical analysis
• Minimize potential losses and optimize rewards
• Map out your plan of attack
• Limit your downside when trading the trend
• Combine options to limit your position risk
• Benefit from exchange traded funds
• Key in on volatility for trading opportunities
• Capitalize on sideways movements

Trading options is serious business. Trading Options For Dummies gives you the expert help you need to succeed.

The Essentials of Risk Management

Risk management is no longer confined solely to risk management specialists. Stakeholders ranging from employees to investors must understand how to quantify the tradeoffs of risk against the potential return. The failure to understand the essential nature of risk can have devastating consequences.

Globally renowned risk and corporate governance experts Michel Crouhy, Dan Galai, and Robert Mark have updated and streamlined their bestselling professional reference Risk Management to introduce you to the world of risk management without requiring you to know the intricate formulas and mathematical details.

The Essentials of Risk Management is the first book to make even the most sophisticated risk management approaches simultaneously accessible to both risk and non risk professionals. It will help you to:

• Increase the transparency of your risk management program to satisfy shareholders, employees, regulators, and other important constituencies
• Keep on top of the continuing evolution of best-practice risk policies and methodologies and associated risk infrastructures
• Implement and efficiently communicate an organization-wide Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) approach that encompasses market, credit, liquidity, operational, legal and regulatory, business, strategic and reputation risks
• Navigate thorny areas including risk policies, risk methodologies, economic capital, regulatory capital, performance measurement, asset-liability management, and more
• Efficiently allocate limited corporate resources to comply with the new generation of risk regulation and corporate governance regulation

As a non-risk professional or board member, you are being called on more than ever before to make sophisticated assessments of your organization's risk exposures as well as play a critical role in its formal risk management process. The Essentials of Risk Management tells you what you need to know to succeed in this challenging new environment.

A Trader's Money Management System: How to Ensure Profit and Avoid the Risk of Ruin (Wiley Trading)

Money management may very well be the most important piece of the trading puzzle. In A Trader's Money Management System, expert Bennett McDowell provides time-tested techniques that can turn a losing trader into a winning oneand take the winning trader to an entirely new level. In revealing his personal approach to staying out of trouble in the financial markets and maximizing profits, he offers comprehensive insights into:

• The psychology of risk control as well as the finer aspects of setting stop-loss exits

• The value of managing trade size and consistent record keeping

• The process of putting together your own personal money management system

Unlike other books that focus on the complex mathematical theories behind money management, this book presents its system in straightforward, easy-to-understand terms that will allow you to quickly see how these concepts workand immediately benefit from the value of effectively managing risk.

Fundamentals of Risk and Insurance

This classic book presents a thorough and comprehensive introduction to the field of insurance while emphasizing the consumer. The new Tenth Edition first examines the concept of risk, the nature of the insurance device, and the principles of risk management. It then discusses the traditional fields of life and health insurance as solutions to the risks connected with the loss of income. And it deals with the risks associated with the ownership of property and legal liability.

Risk Management and Insurance

For many years, introductory insurance textbooks presented insurance as a subject based in contracts. Slowly, the course has moved toward a consumer orientation, providing students with a broad, descriptive survey of the insurance field, covering topics such as legal aspects, life and health, and property and liability. Over the past 10 years, textbooks began to promote, and to a limited degree, incorporate a stronger business risk management component while maintaining a consumer orientation. Harrington/Niehaus' Risk Management and Insurance 2e is written to take the next step offering the essential aspects of insurance contracts and the insurance industry while providing a substantially more conceptual analysis and attention to business risk management and public policy issues that exists in current texts.

Trading Futures For Dummies (For Dummies (Business & Personal Finance))

Explore single-stock futures, ETFs, and alternative energy futures

Protect your assets and maximize your profits in this risky yet lucrative market

Want to take advantage of the futures market? This plain-English guide gives you the surefire strategies you need to be a successful trader, with up-to-the-minute advice on the various types of futures, conducting research, finding a broker, entering and exiting positions, and minimizing your losses. You also get bearish and bullish strategies and tips for trading online.

Discover how to:

• Understand trends in the global economy
• Use charting patterns and indicators
• Execute successful trades
• Set realistic goals
• Avoid common trading pitfalls
• Keep your downside risk under control

Managing Crises Before They Happen: What Every Executive And Manager Needs to Kknow About Crisis Management

From tragic accidents to public relations fiascos, we live in an increasingly crisis-ridden society. In fact, half of the major industrial accidents of the past century occurred in the last 20 years. Incidents such as Bhopal and the Exxon Valdez have become embedded in our consciousness, cultural icons of the worst sort. Other crises, less devastating but with serious impact on their businesses, occur almost daily. Why is this--and what can be done to reverse this disturbing trend?

According to Ian Mitroff, one of the world's leading experts on crisis management, the rise in the crisis rate is due to an ingrained "it-can't happen-to-us" mentality--which, in turn, leads to a total lack of preparedness for crises. His solution? Find out in Managing Crises Before They Happen. This fascinating book provides readers with a powerful framework that will help them:

* Recognize the early warning signals that almost always precede a crisis

* Focus on the big picture, not just the details

* Avoid becoming either the victim or the villain in a crisis situation

* Understand the importance of personal character, corporate culture, and thinking outside the box to effective crisis management

* Learn from one crisis things that can prevent or ameliorate the next.

Introduction to Risk Management and Insurance (9th Edition)

This book focuses on problem-solving from managerial, consumer, and societal perspectives. It emphasizes both the business managerial aspects of risk management and insurance and the numerous consumer applications of the concept of risk management and insurance transaction.

Specific chapter topics include insurance Regulation and contracts, basic property and liability insurance contracts, homeowners insurance, the personal auto policy, professional financial planning, life insurance policies, annuities, medical expense and disability insurance, standard life insurance contract provisions and options, commercial property insurance, general and special liability insurance, employee benefits, social security, and unemployment and workers' compensation insurance.

For use by individuals in insurance occupations, and by those preparing for the certified financial planner board.

Information Security Risk Analysis, Second Edition

The risk management process supports executive decision-making, allowing managers and owners to perform their fiduciary responsibility of protecting the assets of their enterprises. This crucial process should not be a long, drawn-out affair. To be effective, it must be done quickly and efficiently. Information Security Risk Analysis, Second Edition enables CIOs, CSOs, and MIS managers to understand when, why, and how risk assessments and analyses can be conducted effectively. This book discusses the principle of risk management and its three key elements: risk analysis, risk assessment, and vulnerability assessment. It examines the differences between quantitative and qualitative risk assessment, and details how various types of qualitative risk assessment can be applied to the assessment process. The text offers a thorough discussion of recent changes to FRAAP and the need to develop a pre-screening method for risk assessment and business impact analysis.