Related, Trading and Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practitioners by Larry Harris is also excellent.

https://www.amazon.com/Trading-Exchanges-Market-Microstructu...

These aren't really textbooks, but regardless, the Market Wizards series by Jack Schwagger is highly recommended:

https://www.amazon.com/Market-Wizards-Updated-Interviews-Tra...

https://www.amazon.com/New-Market-Wizards-Conversations-Amer...

https://www.amazon.com/Hedge-Fund-Market-Wizards-Winning/dp/...

I second Trading and Exchanges, a phenomenal overview for folks who want to learn how brokerages and market making work.

Are you a trader?

Funny, this book was considered not mathematically rigorous enough in my program but I agree, it is a bad idea to not be familiar with this book because the lingo the book uses (for example, sticky delta) is widely used in trading desks and one cannot afford to be unaware. For my program, Shreve's Stochastic Calculus for Finance (I & II) are the old & new testaments

Having used both Hull and Shreve in two different courses I'd say they're aimed at very different audiences. The course I took using Shreve didn't actually teach much about real world "options, futures, and other derivatives", but treated them more like abstract mathematical ideas and focused more on the mathematical theory used to model such contracts. While the course using Hull focused more on those contacts, not as abstract mathematical concepts, but as real things that actually exist and are actually traded by real people in the real world with all the messiness and uncertainty that can entail. Admittedly a large part of this was no doubt due to the Shreve based course being taught by the math department and the Hull based course being taught be economics department

While I on many levels preferred the Shreve based course, if I had to pick one for practitioners working day to day with this stuff (which I don't actually do, despite my degree), I'd definitely pick Hull.

What would one need to fully understand before tackling these books? What field would these books help them understand and apply this knowledge in?

Ha, at first I thought it's about functional programming. :-)

Optional types and futures are both important and useful examples of monads—in the “container” and “action” interpretations, respectively; and derivatives are the method of constructing zippers, which are an accessible example of comonads, as well as a useful method of constructing other things like parsers, so these are actually pretty solid concepts for a functional programmer—whether in Haskell or otherwise. I would totally buy that book. :)

It is true that it is, but I always thought it was underserved. It’s not particularly clear or insightful and it is very academic.

On interest rates and yield curves, a book I would recommend is Sadr’s Interest Rates Swaps and their Derivatives [1]. Unfortunately it is a bit dated and a lot happened since it was written. But it is a very good book to understand interest rate models, which focuses more on the intuition and practical aspects and which I think is a lot more useful to a professional.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Interest-Rate-Swaps-Their-Derivatives...

What did you study? How did you apply the knowledge in the book?

I studied engineering, applied maths and finance. I structured interest rate derivatives for a while. That’s the book I recommend to new joiners, even those without a stem background.

I'm seeing the 10th edition for £230 and the eight edition for cheaper. Would you be able to tell whether investing in the newer edition is worth?

Are you talking about the Sadr book? I am not aware that there are multiple editions. The kindle version is $70/£55 on amazon.

Sorry, wrong reply! I was referring to Options, Futures and Other Derivatives.

What did you study? How did you apply the knowledge in the book?

What about 'Options as a Strategic Investment'?

can you give me a recommendation on bonds? in particular us treasury bonds.