Perkins, a former chief economist at a Boston strategic-consulting firm, confesses he was an "economic hit man" for 10 years, helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinationals cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business.

The financial industry has adopted Python at a tremendous rate recently, with some of the largest investment banks and hedge funds using it to build core trading and risk management systems. This hands-on guide helps both developers and quantitative analysts get started with Python, and guides you through the most important aspects of using Python for quantitative finance. Using practical examples through the book, author Yves Hilpisch also shows you how to develop a full-fledged framework for Monte Carlo simulation-based derivatives and risk analytics, based on a large, realistic case study. Much of the book uses interactive IPython Notebooks, with topics that include: Fundamentals: Python data structures, NumPy array handling, time series analysis with pandas, visualization with matplotlib, high performance I/O operations with PyTables, date/time information handling, and selected best practices Financial topics: mathematical techniques with NumPy, SciPy and SymPy such as regression and optimization; stochastics for Monte Carlo simulation, Value-at-Risk, and Credit-Value-at-Risk calculations; statistics for normality tests, mean-variance portfolio optimization, principal component analysis (PCA), and Bayesian regression Special topics: performance Python for financial algorithms, such as vectorization and parallelization, integrating Python with Excel, and building financial applications based on Web technologies

Solve common and not-so-common financial problems using Python libraries such as NumPy, SciPy, and pandas Key FeaturesUse powerful Python libraries such as pandas, NumPy, and SciPy to analyze your financial dataExplore unique recipes for financial data analysis and processing with PythonEstimate popular financial models such as CAPM and GARCH using a problem-solution approachBook Description Python is one of the most popular programming languages used in the financial industry, with a huge set of accompanying libraries. In this book, you'll cover different ways of downloading financial data and preparing it for modeling. You'll calculate popular indicators used in technical analysis, such as Bollinger Bands, MACD, RSI, and backtest automatic trading strategies. Next, you'll cover time series analysis and models, such as exponential smoothing, ARIMA, and GARCH (including multivariate specifications), before exploring the popular CAPM and the Fama-French three-factor model. You'll then discover how to optimize asset allocation and use Monte Carlo simulations for tasks such as calculating the price of American options and estimating the Value at Risk (VaR). In later chapters, you'll work through an entire data science project in the financial domain. You'll also learn how to solve the credit card fraud and default problems using advanced classifiers such as random forest, XGBoost, LightGBM, and stacked models. You'll then be able to tune the hyperparameters of the models and handle class imbalance. Finally, you'll focus on learning how to use deep learning (PyTorch) for approaching financial tasks. By the end of this book, you’ll have learned how to effectively analyze financial data using a recipe-based approach. What you will learnDownload and preprocess financial data from different sourcesBacktest the performance of automatic trading strategies in a real-world settingEstimate financial econometrics models in Python and interpret their resultsUse Monte Carlo simulations for a variety of tasks such as derivatives valuation and risk assessmentImprove the performance of financial models with the latest Python librariesApply machine learning and deep learning techniques to solve different financial problemsUnderstand the different approaches used to model financial time series dataWho this book is for This book is for financial analysts, data analysts, and Python developers who want to learn how to implement a broad range of tasks in the finance domain. Data scientists looking to devise intelligent financial strategies to perform efficient financial analysis will also find this book useful. Working knowledge of the Python programming language is mandatory to grasp the concepts covered in the book effectively.

Featuring 15 explosive new chapters, this new edition of the New York Times bestseller brings the story of Economic Hit Men up-to-date and, chillingly, home to the U.S.―but it also gives us hope and the tools to fight back. Former economic hit man John Perkins shares new details about the ways he and others cheated countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. Then he reveals how the deadly EHM cancer he helped create has spread far more widely and deeply than ever in the US and everywhere else—to become the dominant system of business, government, and society today. Finally, he gives an insider view of what we each can do to change it. Economic hit men are the shock troops of what Perkins calls the corporatocracy, a vast network of corporations, banks, colluding governments, and the rich and powerful people tied to them. If the EHMs can't maintain the corrupt status quo through nonviolent coercion, the jackal assassins swoop in. The heart of this book is a completely new section, over 100 pages long, that exposes the fact that all the EHM and jackal tools—false economics, false promises, threats, bribes, extortion, debt, deception, coups, assassinations, unbridled military power—are used around the world today exponentially more than during the era Perkins exposed over a decade ago. As dark as the story gets, this reformed EHM also provides hope. Perkins offers specific actions each of us can take to transform what he calls a failing Death Economy into a Life Economy that provides sustainable abundance for all.

The widespread adoption of AI and machine learning is revolutionizing many industries today. Once these technologies are combined with the programmatic availability of historical and real-time financial data, the financial industry will also change fundamentally. With this practical book, you'll learn how to use AI and machine learning to discover statistical inefficiencies in financial markets and exploit them through algorithmic trading. Author Yves Hilpisch shows practitioners, students, and academics in both finance and data science practical ways to apply machine learning and deep learning algorithms to finance. Thanks to lots of self-contained Python examples, you'll be able to replicate all results and figures presented in the book. In five parts, this guide helps you: Learn central notions and algorithms from AI, including recent breakthroughs on the way to artificial general intelligence (AGI) and superintelligence (SI) Understand why data-driven finance, AI, and machine learning will have a lasting impact on financial theory and practice Apply neural networks and reinforcement learning to discover statistical inefficiencies in financial markets Identify and exploit economic inefficiencies through backtesting and algorithmic trading--the automated execution of trading strategies Understand how AI will influence the competitive dynamics in the financial industry and what the potential emergence of a financial singularity might bring about