The Practical Guide to Wall Street is an indispensable resource for anyone who aspires to a front-office sales or trading position on Wall Street and an essential desk reference for market practitioners and those who interact with this exciting but widely misunderstood industry. Written by an experienced trader in a clear, conversational style and assuming no previous background in finance, The Practical Guide to Wall Street provides a thorough schooling in the core curriculum of the equity and equity derivatives sales and trading business - exactly what you would learn from sitting beside the traders at a tier-one Wall Street investment bank (except that in practice, traders rarely have time to provide such detailed explanations!) Topics covered include:

• Clear, detailed and intuitive explanations of all major products, their function, pricing and risks (several of which are unavailable anywhere else despite producing billions of dollars in annual revenue for Wall St.)
• The layout of the trading floor, the roles and responsibilities of the different sales and trading groups and how they interact to service the client business
• An overview of the structure of the macro-economy and the trader’s perspective on the significance of economic data releases and their impact on the financial markets
• A review of those concepts from fundamental valuation and financial statement analysis of greatest relevance on the trading floor (as opposed to abstract valuation models)
• Practical details of the structure and functioning of the equity and derivative markets including translations of trader jargon, Bloomberg tips, market conventions, liquidity and risk considerations and much more…

This book provides the first comprehensive explanation of all aspects of the functioning of the equities division, with information, details and insights previously only available to those who already worked on a trading floor. The availability of this material in a format accessible to non-professionals fundamentally changes the level of industry knowledge employers in the financial services industry can expect of new hires.

Matthew Tagliani, CFA, has more than ten years of trading and risk management experience in equity swaps, ETFs, futures, and program trading. He has worked at Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Credit Suisse and holds a master's degree in applied mathematics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.