Books by Timothy Falcon Crack

[Note: eBook version of latest edition now available; see Amazon author page for details.] Why buy notes from a fellow student who met the material for the first time last year? This inexpensive book contains notes written by an award-winning professor who taught the material for 25 years! This pocket-sized book is aimed at students in their first finance class at the undergraduate, MBA, or executive education level. The class is usually called "Business Finance" or "Financial Management." (A list of topics covered appears below.) The author's goals are to help you master the material and to lift your grades. He approaches these goals from two different angles. First, he uses 25 years of experience teaching this material to explain carefully the stumbling blocks that have consistently tripped up students year after year. Addressing these common sources of confusion gives every student every opportunity to master the material. Second, he presents safe strategies he has developed to help you solve numerical problems in finance. Although these strategies take only an extra minute to implement, they frame each numerical problem so as to increase the likelihood that you detect and fix any errors, while reducing the likelihood that you make any errors in the first place. These techniques also increase the likelihood that you earn partial credit. Note that because the author focuses on stumbling blocks, he necessarily skips over some simpler material that does not usually cause problems. As such, he does not cover the fine detail of every topic in the class. Similarly, he gives only enough worked examples to explain concepts and techniques. Different students have different needs. For example, you might have no real interest in finance, but you need to pass the class to get your degree. Alternatively, you might be a gung-ho finance major who wants to ace the class, or an MBA or exec-ed student who does not care about grades and just wants to master the material. Prof. Crack has been meeting different needs in the classroom for 25 years, and his presentation is pitched simultaneously at these different clienteles. Although this book is aimed primarily at students, the fact that Prof. Crack focuses on essential knowledge and techniques also makes this book useful to instructors. For example, an instructor who is new to the class can use this book to quickly improve his or her understanding and teaching of the trickiest parts. The chapters of the book are as follows: Foundations, Financial Statements, TVMI (One Cash Flow), TVM II (Multiple Cash Flows), Inflation and Indices, Bonds and Interest Rates, Equities and Dividend Discount Models, Capital Budgeting I (Decision Rules), Capital Budgeting II (Cash Flows), Capital Budgeting III (Cost of Capital), Capital Budgeting IV (A Paradox), The CAPM and Interest Rates, Risk and Return, Market Efficiency, Capital Structure, and Dividends.

[Note: eBook version of latest edition now available; see Amazon author page for details.] The author is an MIT PhD who has won multiple teaching awards. This is an empowering personal account of his success in fighting obesity and the obesity gene. There are no recipes, no menu plans, and no exercise plans. Rather, this is a book about informed decision making. It contains information, observations, and advice designed to help you make a powerful choice: the choice to attain and maintain good health and a healthy weight. It was written especially for people who have tried to get to a healthy weight already and have failed, perhaps more than once. This book is about being committed and making powerful choices. You will not find a picture of a half-dressed impossibly fit young man or woman on the front cover of this book. Few, if any, overweight people can achieve that level of fitness, and books with images like that are misleading for most readers. Instead, this book is full of hard truths and successful techniques for achieving a healthy weight. The author's personal experiences mean that he is unafraid to write openly and honestly about being fat and unhealthy and how to fight these successfully---even in the face of a genetic predisposition towards obesity. This book is supportive, but in an honest tough-love kind of way. The book contains references to and discussion of more than 40 recent research studies. These include medical journal articles from top journals, respected government research, articles from top university researchers, and other related research. Although many of the articles are written at an advanced level, the discussion of them in the book is simplified to make them accessible to all. Some people will find this book offensive because the author calls a spade a spade. He referred to himself as "fat" when he was fat, and argues that being open and honest about it was liberating. If you cannot label yourself as "fat," because you view this term as offensive, rather than a simple statement of scientific fact, then don't buy this book. Some people will find this book hubristic because the author gives multiple examples of making powerful choices in his own life with successful outcomes, and because he presents techniques to get healthy that worked for him. If you easily mistake advice from successful people for hubris, then don't buy this book. If, however, you have reached a stage in your life where you are ready to be honest about being fat, and you are ready to accept advice from someone who has been in your shoes and in your head, then this may be the book to change your life.

THIS IS A MUST READ! This pocket edition contains a careful selection of 20 brain teasers, 30 thinking questions, and over 100 non-quantitative questions, collected from actual job interviews in investment banking, investment management, and options trading. The interviewers use the same questions year-after-year, and here they are. The brain teasers and more than half the thinking questions are presented with detailed solutions. Note that there is also a complementary pocket edition available of quantitative questions with detailed answers taken from the same interviews (ISBN 978-0-9941-38-1-9). The questions in these pocket editions are a careful selection taken from the full sized edition of Heard on The Street: Quantitative Questions from Wall Street Job Interviews (i.e., this pocket-sized book contains a subset of the content of the larger book; so, don't buy both). The full size edition is the first and the original book of quantitative questions from finance job interviews. It has been painstakingly revised over 18 years and 14 editions, and has been shaped by feedback from many hundreds of readers. With over 50,000 copies in print, its readership is unmatched by any competing book.This pocket edition contains a revised section on interview technique based on Dr. Crack's experiences interviewing candidates and also based on feedback from interviewers worldwide. The questions come from all types of interviews (corporate finance, sales and trading, quant research, etc.), and from all levels of interviews (undergraduate, MS, MBA, PhD). Dr. Crack has a PhD from MIT. He has won many teaching awards, and has publications in the top academic, practitioner, and teaching journals in finance. He has degrees/diplomas in Mathematics/Statistics, Finance, Financial Economics and Accounting/Finance. Dr. Crack taught at the university level for over 20 years including four years as a front line teaching assistant for MBA students at MIT. He has worked as an independent consultant to the New York Stock Exchange, and his most recent practitioner job was as the head of a quantitative active equity research team at what was the world's largest institutional money manager.Dr. Crack is also the author of Basic Black-Scholes: Option Pricing and Trading, and Foundations for Scientific Investing: Capital Markets Intuition and Critical Thinking Skills.

THIS IS A MUST READ! This pocket edition contains a careful selection of 75 of the best quantitative questions collected from actual job interviews in investment banking, investment management, and options trading. The interviewers use the same questions year-after-year, and here they are with detailed solutions! Note that there is also a pocket edition available of non-quantitative questions and brain teasers (the former without solution, and the latter mostly with solutions), taken from the same interviews (ISBN 978-0-9941-38-2-6). The questions in these pocket editions are a careful selection taken from the full sized edition of Heard on The Street: Quantitative Questions from Wall Street Job Interviews (i.e., this pocket-sized book contains a subset of the content of the larger book; so, don't buy both). The full size edition is the first and the original book of quantitative questions from finance job interviews. It has been painstakingly revised over more than 20 years and more than 20 editions, and has been shaped by feedback from many hundreds of readers. With over 50,000 copies in print, its readership is unmatched by any competing book.This pocket edition contains a revised section on interview technique based on Dr. Crack's experiences interviewing candidates and also based on feedback from interviewers worldwide. Note that the questions in this book come from all types of interviews (corporate finance, sales and trading, quant research, etc.), and from all levels of interviews (undergraduate, MS, MBA, PhD). Dr. Crack has a PhD from MIT. He has won many teaching awards, and has publications in the top academic, practitioner, and teaching journals in finance. He has degrees/diplomas in Mathematics/Statistics, Finance, Financial Economics and Accounting/Finance. Dr. Crack taught at the university level for over 20 years including four years as a front line teaching assistant for MBA students at MIT. He has worked as an independent consultant to the New York Stock Exchange, and his most recent practitioner job was as the head of a quantitative active equity research team at what was the world's largest institutional money manager.Dr. Crack is also the author of Basic Black-Scholes: Option Pricing and Trading, and Foundations for Scientific Investing: Capital Markets Intuition and Critical Thinking Skills.