Joseph de la Vega

[2] In a stilted style he describes the whole gamut, running from options (puts and calls), futures contracts, margin buying, to bull and bear conspiracies, even some form of stock-index trading.

His father was a converso from Espejo, a small town in Córdoba province (Andalusia), who had made a solemn vow in the dungeon of the Inquisition that within a year after regaining his liberty he would openly profess Judaism.

[9] Joseph was taught by Isaac Aboab da Fonseca and Moses Raphael de Aguilar, members of the Talmud Torah community.

[10] He completed his first Hebrew drama, "Asire ha-Tiḳwah" ("The prisoner of hope"), in three acts, which appeared in Amsterdam in 1673 at Joseph Athias and in which he allegorically depicted the victory of the will over the passions.

This transfer of know-how formed the basis of derivatives trading in London, firmly linking Amsterdam's pioneering work to the emergence of modern markets.

Confusión de Confusiones remained little known until 1892, when German economist Richard Ehrenberg published an influential essay in the Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik entitled "Die Amsterdamer Aktienspekulation im 17.

"[25] According to L. Petram, Joseph devoted a disproportionate amount of attention to tricks and schemes; his book is riddled with too much drama and too many technical shortcomings to be useful as an instruction manual.

Joseph wrote Confusión primarily for the entertainment of educated members of the Sephardic community (the Academia de los Floridos).