Hey guys, please help me out in outlining a title for my thesis in uni. I plan to write on derivatives securities and risk management for financial institutions and companies. What are the scopes and aspects I can write about regarding those mentioned? Really appreciate your opinions 
I remember reading that theses with a colon in the title fare better. Use several colons, like… “Risk Management: Use of Derivative Securities in: a) Financial Institutions and b) companies: A retrospective on historical approaches: by Me.”
it doesn’t sound like you actually have a thesis for someone to title
My thesis is: You’re screwed. I feel it will hold up pretty well under peer review.
That thesis topic is vastly too big. You want a thesis titled something like “A comparison of fuel hedging strategies for Southwest vs. Delta”
How about options vs. futures for traders and/or financial institutions? Just plan to utilize duration gap analysis, that’s my thought.
Still not much of a topic there. What interesting thing are you going to say about futures vs options? They are just different and you use them differently.
How about: “If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense”
“Telltale signs of Overleveraging in the US Economy: the Hazards, Opportunties, and Lessons from an Investor’s Perspective”
darrelhk Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Hey guys, please help me out in outlining a title > for my thesis in uni. I plan to write on > derivatives securities and risk management for > financial institutions and companies. What are the > scopes and aspects I can write about regarding > those mentioned? Really appreciate your opinions > When Common Sense Failed: The Great Oxymoron of Quant Wizardy.
Mathematics… Wonton… Burrito meals
“Titling the Thesis: Following the Path from Desparation to Hopelessness”
A title should follow directly from your thesis, which should be a question. --> Thesis question What is the probability of going home with an above average partner on any given weekend given a single encounter and average skills? --> Title Applied Statistics Theory: a Bayesian Interpretation to Night Life in New York City in Two Dimensions. One can’t start with: I have this topic that I want to write on, now what is my title. I suppose you can, but it wouldn’t be a coherent paper. As some of the other posters mentioned, you need a thesis before you can write your title. If I was you, I would sit down and try and find some problem that you can’t seem to find the answer for, phrase that as a question, and start researching. Once you write 100ish pages, you should be to write a title with no problems. When I wrote my thesis, it was the very last thing I wrote. This subject: “derivatives securities and risk management for financial institutions and companies” is so extremely broad that you could never get a meaningful question that could be answered in a finite amount of time. You should narrow your inquiry to one small area of the industry, and if risk management interests you then you can explore how certain risk management tools might help answer your question. I hope this makes sense.
I do agree with you eire1130, can i narrow down my title to risk management in the financial industry?
I think you need to do some study about something interesting. Risk management in the financial industry is an astronomically big topic.
darrelhk Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I do agree with you eire1130, can i narrow down my > title to risk management in the financial > industry? I think you missed the point of my post. When Henry George wrote Progress and Poverty, by the second page he asked the reader a question: “Why, in spite of increase in productive power, do wages tend to a minimum which will give but a bare living?” He then spent the next 300 or so pages trying to answer that question, and the remaining 200 or so proposing an implementation. Even Adam Smith tells you in the title what his question is: “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” Since you’re writing a thesis paper, and not an entire book, your inquiry should be very narrow. A far as risk management goes, I think what readers would find interesting right now is not necessarily new techniques, but rather why our exiting techniques failed. But it doesn’t really matter what I think is interesting, but rather it’s what puzzles you that you want to try and answer. I’m sure in the vast amount of reading you’ve done there is some issue that has puzzled you, something that you can’t find the answer for. Maybe even something that you’ve read in The Economist, or here on these boards? Who knows. As Rilke said: Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now… [instead] Live the questions"
Nice job, eire.
how about a title such as short-term trading strategies in the currency or options market? Like I will explain on usage of technical analysis and fundamental analysis.
Do an empirical analysis/case study of Currency Hedging Management in Global Firms a.k.a. Foreign Exchange Risk Management in Multinationals. Make sure it’s a case study: a case study is always viable as a topic for a university thesis, it is unique i.e. the case will be unique per definition. You collect annual reports, do a series of interviews, compile lists of data and run some statistical analysis on it, present the graphs and draw (jump to) conclusions. No need for groundbreaking theory you can save that for your doctoral thesis…
@eire1130 and JDV - your posts helped my thesis formulation/writing too …Thx! I thought I was weird coz I dont have a Title set in stone yet…but most people who have been thr the process told me to “just write”… as long as you know what you are writing about, and know what you are trying to “find out” or say… I also believe it is normal to change the thesis title frequently? When I began working on my PhD research proposal - I found that the last thing i formulated was the Tentative title… @ darrelhk - I dont think I would worry too much about a “title” per se - I believe that comes to you at some point in your writing…even for my research proposal — i found that inasmuch as the scope did not change - my tentative titles changed very frequently…and a lot of the first tries - I wrote…but tossed out what i wrote - but it helped me determine what I really was interested in writing about… sorry I cant contribute to any interesting things you may write on…I am researching/writing on something entirely different. Good Luck!