Naked Option

Extracts

Then, on September 12, 2001, I became one of them.

The day before, we watched the whole horrific scene over our shoulders as we fled from our offices in the World Financial Center, a few hundred feet west of the Trade Center. The headquarters of our investment bank was badly damaged by smoke and debris. But while we were still staring at the TV replays, the bank was leasing space in a building across the Hudson River that would serve as our temporary trading floor until things returned to normal.

Which they never did...Read more

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Author's site

Joe Kolman: Naked Option www.nakedoption.com

Jacket text for Naked Option

Dave Ackerman, the narrator of Naked Option, is a brilliant trader but one day, recklessly trying to one-up his firm's superstar, he goes naked on an option trade and loses $112 million in two hours. His career is over. Then he hears about an auditing job at an investment bank. He knows within minutes that something is very wrong, but he's so desperate, he takes the job.

His new partner is Susanna Cassuto, an attractive young auditor he tags as a rich party girl. But on the couch with the lights off, she becomes something else - awkward and inexperienced. What is going on? Together, they discover the elegant embezzlement scheme going on: one trader is working inside with a partner outside. When somebody turns up dead, Dave and Susanna race to put the pieces together - but the bank drops the case. They're fired. Furious, Dave goes out on his own to find the killer.

But the killer finds him first.

About Joe Kolman

Joe Kolman has been a financial writer for more than two decades. He began his career in 1983 as an associate editor at Institutional Investor magazine. In 1992, he started Derivatives Strategy, a publication that explained the nascent market in over-the-counter derivatives in plain English. The publication quickly became the leading magazine covering the U.S. derivatives market. In 2005, he became a vice president at AllianceBernstein Investments. He has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, and his writing has appeared in more than a dozen financial publications.

More about Joe Kolman

Reviews for Naked Option

"A page-turner and a slice of life - on and off the trading floor."
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, best-selling author of THE BLACK SWAN and FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS

"Joe Kolman, a respected financial journalist, uses deft touches, unexpected plot shifts and mordant wit to create a fast-paced and entertaining financial thriller with a decidedly firm sense of location in New York in the days after 9/11."
- Satyajit Das, author of 'Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives'

"Full of suspense, sex and surprise."
- Alison Lurie, Pulitzer-prize winning author of FOREIGN AFFAIRS

"A volatile cocktail of sex and murder that's also a remarkably realistic and humane portrayal of dealing room life."
- Patrick L. Young, author of "The New Capital Market Revolution: The Winners, the Losers and the Future of Finance"

"A keen observer of the finance industry shows the underbelly of Wall Street traders and New York culture. A rare work of literary finance fiction."
- Frank Partnoy, author of FIASCO: The Inside Story of a Wall Street Trader.