Suspended Animation . . . .
Things seem to be in a suspended animation. Things that were in an active frenzy before Diwali seem to have slowed down to a crawl. I suspect a dull December lies ahead.
On the family front things are fine, nephew's birthday was celebrated today at sis' place where she had organised a pooja. I wanted to give nephew a nice video-game, but my wife expressed strong disapproval and warned that sis would heartily disapprove too. So I desisted from doing what would obviously have delighted nephew. Gave him some cash instead. Wifey and sis are right though - he is going into his 10th grade next year - a crucial end of school exam lies ahead and it would be unwise to gift him something that could distract him from studies.
Last night, bumped into an esnips folder that contained lovely old Marathi songs. Songs of the genre and age that my mother tuned in on the radio every evening which we inadvertently ended up hearing and gradually liking. Those songs still bring back pleasant memories of cosy care-free evenings.
Picked up two new books yesterday. Have located a new bookshop in town that stocks affordable Indian editions of foreign books in Finance and Banking.
One is part of the Princeton Series in Finance writen by Professors Darrel Duffie (yeah, the math-fin giant) and Keneth Singleton titled "Credit Risk: Pricing, Measurement and Management", this should be a handy reference to catch up about Credit Risk Modelling.
The second book is a huge and impressive volume by Moorad Choudhry titled "The Bond and Money Markets: Strategy, Trading and Analysis". Impressive because of its sweeping and detailed scope - starting from the basic concepts of fixed income securities it goes on to cover Government Security markets and then into Corporate Bonds markets where he explores complex bonds - ones with embedded options, convertibles and the whole gamut of mortgage and asset backed securities. He then moves on to cover the money markets - delving upon the important topic of asset-liability management before winding up with a section on interest rate modelling and advanced bond analytics. This book has been a cool find - as against an amazon price of USD 124., I purchased it for a discounted price of INR 716 (USD 18.15). :-)