Can someone recommend a decent book that can let you quickly understand the current market, instruments, basic conventions, etc ?Thanks.

There might be several depending on your background

Can you specify your question?

Guide to Financial Markets (The Economist) Marc Levinson: at the level of light reading (there are a few more texts around like this, FT has one as well)Financial Markets and Institutions (7th Edition) Frederic S. Mishkin at the level of standard generic business undergrad.(Miskin's other book on the topic "Economics of Money, Bank and Financial Institutions" have at least two versions, might be used for business undergrad with a little more math thirst such as finance or economics. Madura's text is suitable for this level as well)Kettell's Economics for Financial Market could satisfy the needs of quants' who want a fast introduction to general markets knowledge; sort of general introduction.Cvitavic's is my choice for master's level courses for quants. Also, excellent is Elliot & Kop's text "Mathematics of Financial Markets" any future researcher's must read : Econometrics of Financial Markets by Campbell & Lo AND A Non-Random Walk Down Wall Street by Lo & MacKinlay.so, what is your need?

Thanks.Most interested in bonds market and interest swap market,as well as other derivatives, what instruments do they use, what terms do they use in real trading.may not need go all the way to the bottom of how alpha and beta are derived, but need to know what the purpose of those paramters when check on a bloomberg terminal.

for fixed income generally, tuckmanfor swaps specifically, flavell

I would go for: I am waiting for: taking into account the papers written by the authors recently, you can buy it for sure if you have some spare cash