Finance: Investments, Institutions, and Management - ... (ISBN 0321278321)

An okay introduction:
This book provides an okay introduction to Finance, but it leaves much to be desired. My chief complaint is that this book gives important basic finance formulas, but it does not explain the derivations of them well. Some general concepts are explained, but then poof a formula suddenly appears which a clever reader can probably figure out how to derive himself, but such a reader would then not really even need to be given the formula by the book in the first place. What makes a person educated in finance worth more than the the price of his or her financial calculator is that person's understanding of these formulas and how financial analysis is approached. Otherwise this is not a bad book. Some financial theory is discussed, and this book explains the basics of financial markets and different forms of financial instruments, so the reader should be able to walk away from this book with at least a basic understanding of these topics. However, for those who wish to gain a solid understanding of this topics a more in depth book is needed.