[pbhowmic]

Funny, this book was considered not mathematically rigorous enough in my program but I agree, it is a bad idea to not be familiar with this book because the lingo the book uses (for example, sticky delta) is widely used in trading desks and one cannot afford to be unaware. For my program, Shreve's Stochastic Calculus for Finance (I & II) are the old & new testaments

[dagw]

Having used both Hull and Shreve in two different courses I'd say they're aimed at very different audiences. The course I took using Shreve didn't actually teach much about real world "options, futures, and other derivatives", but treated them more like abstract mathematical ideas and focused more on the mathematical theory used to model such contracts. While the course using Hull focused more on those contacts, not as abstract mathematical concepts, but as real things that actually exist and are actually traded by real people in the real world with all the messiness and uncertainty that can entail. Admittedly a large part of this was no doubt due to the Shreve based course being taught by the math department and the Hull based course being taught be economics department

While I on many levels preferred the Shreve based course, if I had to pick one for practitioners working day to day with this stuff (which I don't actually do, despite my degree), I'd definitely pick Hull.

[minhazm423]

What would one need to fully understand before tackling these books? What field would these books help them understand and apply this knowledge in?