Fundamentals of Trading Energy Futures and Options (ISBN 0878148361)

Very Good Primer:
This is an excellent and invaluable learning tool. It is helpful to have some financial experience, namely understanding some of the terms like call and put,etc, so that you may spend more time focusing on the concepts, but not absolutely necessary. The book is logically organized to start with an overview of the futures market,followed by an overview of futures, generalized hedging, and options. All topics are related to energy commodities with easy to understand explanations. Relevant details relating to the energy market (definitions of spark spreads, inter-exchange hedging strategies, etc) are included. Although I could not go into the market and trade commodities after reading this book, I could understand the overall concept of hedging energy futures and options and this serves as an excellent primer to the next level. I would say that this book is at about the college senior level, easy on the math and not heavy on modeling. I would recommend it for the beginning MBA student but not at a PHD level.

Outstanding material on trading energy futures and options:
Thanks to the authors for presenting this information in language that is understandable to the masses. You have demystified a topic that is often encrypted. Many people in the energy business would benefit greatly in their overall understanding by reading this book! It is well-organized and makes the complex business of hedging futures contracts seem logical. I have worked with wholesale energy traders and seen the trading floor with it's live weather maps, analytical systems, and 100 or so traders and I thought it was an exciting environment. Understanding P/(L) positions, mark to market, and familiarizing with the multitude of hedging strategies has made this intriguing business all the more interesting to me. The book delivers exactly what its title implies. Thank you, again!

Well Written:
The concepts and trading strategies of futures and options are well explained in plain English. Unfortunately, the author only scatterly discussed some characteristics of the energy industry. To be a successful trader in the energy futures market, you must be an expert in the industry first. However, this might be beyond the scope of the book.

Great book if you know nothing about futures, skip if otherwise:
This is a great book. It's well written and easy to read. However, there is very little here in terms of specifics to energy per se. The book spends a lot of time describing basic futures and options concepts. Still, if you're new to finance and want an introduction to the energy markets, this book is for you. Especially valuable was the appendix at the end of the book which summarizes various popular different energy future contracts.

Save Your Money!:
I thought this book would cover trading strategies unique to the energy futures markets. NOT!! It is a book filled with a lot of option strategies and technical analysis that could apply to any publicly traded equity. It contains nothing unique to futures or energy futures for that matter. Anything unique about the energy markets referred to in this book could be condensed in two or three pages. When the seller only lets you see the front cover, -- buyer beware. Save your money.