Preface

Graduate students and practitioners coming to the area of quantitative finance may be daunted by the abstruseness of stochastic matters, coupled with the austerity of scientific programming languages. Learning these disciplines is a challenge that some are reluctant to tackle. Then, to get some hands-on expertise of complex valuation issues with an easy-to-learn programming language, without delving too deeply into the theory, proves to be an attractive alternative: this is what this book invites you to do. For this purpose, VBA has been chosen for its accessible code and its connection with Excel and its easy-to-use spreadsheet format.

What sort of financial applications may be run in VBA?

Contrary to common belief, you can run a lot of complex pricings with VBA, almost as fast as in C++ even if VBA is not going to compete with C++ as the engine of big risk management systems. This book will not specifically address the computing performance topic: for a comprehensive approach to this see, e.g., Webber (2011). However, one thing to remember is that, not only in terms of accuracy, but also in terms of computational cost, VBA is an efficient tool to get fast and in-depth understanding skills on complex derivatives.

How this book can help you

To complete a pricing project from scratch is a road paved with challenging steps. If you are holding this book it means you are already a VBA developer, or you intend to become one, and you have some taste for quantitative matters: ...

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