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.
"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.
I found Naked Option completely unputdownable. This book is evidence that you can learn more about the financial world and options trading from a good novel than you can from any average non-fiction book, but to talk about this work in such utilitarian terms is to do it a gross disservice. Here is ultimately a proper, bona fide, high quality novel, which could be read by anybody who enjoys fiction, only the world it leads you into is that of the trading floor, fraud, compliance, and how gay people must hide their sexuality in an options trading environment. Twists and turns in the plot made me want to read on and I found myself immersed in the world of options trading, with its bluff macho culture, and its opportunities for fraud. The contrast in the story between financial world crime and murder, and how an outside policeman could not really understand the financial centre, does strike a note of truth. It is set in the post-9/11 culture with a US background, which gives it a freshness and an immediacy. The love interest works well and adds realism. If you want to know how City trading really works, be sure to read this book, but you will very likely become hooked as I was, which will take up your spare time for a few days in a pretty pleasurable and interesting way. If you read this book, you will be glad that you had. Hugh Thomas
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.
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