Derman

After reading "Trader, Guns and Money", "My Life as a Quant" was the living proof of Amazon's business model. I ordered this book simply because it says "People who possess Das' book also bought it". Shopping online for books though hard to replace the joy of finding a good read in bookstores, I still reward myself of new books every months by ordering from Amazon Japan (their English books are usually 10% less than Kinokuniya or Maruzen).

Derman implemented the famous BDT (Black-Derman-Toy) model for bond option valuaiton. Not consider myself a hardcored Financial Engineer, but I am very curious about how the serious academic transit, adopt and perform in the dog-eat-dog investment banks. Almost finishing the book, quite interesting in reading it as if it is a story since the stories, names, mathmatical equation and concepts are so familar. Even the experience of jumping ships (transfer from one company to another) is damn similar.

I am not sure what Derman is doing now, given a chance in particle physics academia research, would he ever wanted to end up in Wall Street? Or would he surrender to the reality and money?