Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines, and Wired Markets
Technology has transformed global markets, but this is nothing new. Markets have been shaped by machinery for hundreds of years, and this continues at a rapid pace today.

Author David Leinweber-a computer scientist who accidentally stumbled upon Wall Street and became an innovator in the application of modern information technology in trading and investing-is a well-qualified guide to the nerds of greater Wall Street. And now, in this engaging and entertaining new book, he tells the tale of the ongoing technological transformation of the world's financial markets.

The impact of technology on investing is profound, and Leinweber provides an intriguing look at where technology on Wall Street has been, what it has meant, and how it will impact the markets of tomorrow, and its role in the multifaceted crises of today. In essence, the financial game has changed and will continue to change due entirely to technology. Throughout these pages, Leinweber takes a detailed look at the new "players," human or otherwise, that offer both unprecedented opportunities and debilitating dangers in this ever-evolving environment.

Divided into four parts, this lively exploration of markets and machines:

  • Illustrates the history of technology upheavals in markets and deals with electronic markets and algorithmic trading in Part One: Wired Markets
  • Explores the use of wired markets, and anything else you can find, to outperform market averages in Part Two: Alpha as Life
  • Examines how humans and machines can work together to extract useful information for investment and trading from textual sources in Part Three: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Amplification
  • Considers the roles of technology in contributing to the crisis of 2008, as well as its use to avoid future mishaps in Part Four (Epilogue): Nerds Gone Wild? Wired Markets in Distress

Being a successful investor-whether individual or institutional-involves more than stock picking, asset allocation, or market timing: it involves technology. And through this story, Leinweber helps you go beyond the numbers to see exactly how advanced technology has become a bigger part of modern markets.

It's getting harder every day to see the difference between financial markets and computer networks. Hopefully, after reading this book, you'll have a better sense of how technology shapes today's markets, and how to best participate in the future of electronic finance.

1111350044
Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines, and Wired Markets
Technology has transformed global markets, but this is nothing new. Markets have been shaped by machinery for hundreds of years, and this continues at a rapid pace today.

Author David Leinweber-a computer scientist who accidentally stumbled upon Wall Street and became an innovator in the application of modern information technology in trading and investing-is a well-qualified guide to the nerds of greater Wall Street. And now, in this engaging and entertaining new book, he tells the tale of the ongoing technological transformation of the world's financial markets.

The impact of technology on investing is profound, and Leinweber provides an intriguing look at where technology on Wall Street has been, what it has meant, and how it will impact the markets of tomorrow, and its role in the multifaceted crises of today. In essence, the financial game has changed and will continue to change due entirely to technology. Throughout these pages, Leinweber takes a detailed look at the new "players," human or otherwise, that offer both unprecedented opportunities and debilitating dangers in this ever-evolving environment.

Divided into four parts, this lively exploration of markets and machines:

  • Illustrates the history of technology upheavals in markets and deals with electronic markets and algorithmic trading in Part One: Wired Markets
  • Explores the use of wired markets, and anything else you can find, to outperform market averages in Part Two: Alpha as Life
  • Examines how humans and machines can work together to extract useful information for investment and trading from textual sources in Part Three: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Amplification
  • Considers the roles of technology in contributing to the crisis of 2008, as well as its use to avoid future mishaps in Part Four (Epilogue): Nerds Gone Wild? Wired Markets in Distress

Being a successful investor-whether individual or institutional-involves more than stock picking, asset allocation, or market timing: it involves technology. And through this story, Leinweber helps you go beyond the numbers to see exactly how advanced technology has become a bigger part of modern markets.

It's getting harder every day to see the difference between financial markets and computer networks. Hopefully, after reading this book, you'll have a better sense of how technology shapes today's markets, and how to best participate in the future of electronic finance.

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Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines, and Wired Markets

Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines, and Wired Markets

Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines, and Wired Markets

Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines, and Wired Markets

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Overview

Technology has transformed global markets, but this is nothing new. Markets have been shaped by machinery for hundreds of years, and this continues at a rapid pace today.

Author David Leinweber-a computer scientist who accidentally stumbled upon Wall Street and became an innovator in the application of modern information technology in trading and investing-is a well-qualified guide to the nerds of greater Wall Street. And now, in this engaging and entertaining new book, he tells the tale of the ongoing technological transformation of the world's financial markets.

The impact of technology on investing is profound, and Leinweber provides an intriguing look at where technology on Wall Street has been, what it has meant, and how it will impact the markets of tomorrow, and its role in the multifaceted crises of today. In essence, the financial game has changed and will continue to change due entirely to technology. Throughout these pages, Leinweber takes a detailed look at the new "players," human or otherwise, that offer both unprecedented opportunities and debilitating dangers in this ever-evolving environment.

Divided into four parts, this lively exploration of markets and machines:

  • Illustrates the history of technology upheavals in markets and deals with electronic markets and algorithmic trading in Part One: Wired Markets
  • Explores the use of wired markets, and anything else you can find, to outperform market averages in Part Two: Alpha as Life
  • Examines how humans and machines can work together to extract useful information for investment and trading from textual sources in Part Three: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Amplification
  • Considers the roles of technology in contributing to the crisis of 2008, as well as its use to avoid future mishaps in Part Four (Epilogue): Nerds Gone Wild? Wired Markets in Distress

Being a successful investor-whether individual or institutional-involves more than stock picking, asset allocation, or market timing: it involves technology. And through this story, Leinweber helps you go beyond the numbers to see exactly how advanced technology has become a bigger part of modern markets.

It's getting harder every day to see the difference between financial markets and computer networks. Hopefully, after reading this book, you'll have a better sense of how technology shapes today's markets, and how to best participate in the future of electronic finance.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780470500569
Publisher: Wiley
Publication date: 05/27/2009
Sold by: JOHN WILEY & SONS
Format: eBook
Pages: 400
File size: 10 MB

About the Author

DAVID LEINWEBER is a Haas Fellow in Finance at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and founding Director of the Center for Innovative Financial Technology at Berkeley. He is the founder of two pioneering financial technology firms and successfully managed multibillion-dollar institutional portfolios for many years. Dr. Leinweber has consulted, published, and lectured widely on the use of advanced technology, artificial intelligence, and intelligence amplification in finance—always in an easy and accessible way—and has earned the reputation as "class clown of the quantitative investing industry." He received BS degrees in physics and electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a PhD in applied mathematics from Harvard University.

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Table of Contents

Foreword by Ted Aronson xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction xv

Part One 1 Wired Markets

Chapter 1: An Illustrated History of Wired Markets 5

Chapter 2: Greatest Hits of Computation in Finance 31

Financial Technology Stars; Hits and Misses; The Crackpot as Billionaire; Future Technological Stars; Mining the Deep Web; Language Technology; EDGAR; Greatest Hits, and the Mother of All Greatest Misses

Chapter 3: Algorithm Wars 65

Early Algos; Algos for Alpha; Algos for the Buy Side; From Order Pad to Algos; A Scientifi c Approach; Job Insecurity for Traders; So Many Markets, So Little Time; Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns; Models Aren’t Markets; Robots, RoboTraders, and Traders; Markets in 2015, Focus on Risk; Playing Well with Robots and Algorithms; Seeing the Big Picture in Markets; Agents for News and Pre-News; Algorithms at the Edge

Part Two 89 Alpha as Life

Chapter 4: Where Does Alpha Come From? 95

Alpha from Innovation; Alpha, the ARPANET, and the Internet; Summary

Chapter 5: A Gentle Introduction to Computerized Investing 109

Indexing 101; Active Management; What Do Quantitative Managers Do?; Active Management on Steroids; Finding Information and Inefficiencies to Produce Alpha; All the Stocks, All the Time; Jumping the Trading Cost Hurdle; Putting the Pieces Together; Does This Really Work?

Chapter 6: Stupid Data Miner Tricks 135

“Your Mama Is a Data Miner”; Strip Mining the S&P 500; Enough Regression Tricks; Is There Any Hope for Data Miners?; Summary (and Sermonette); Counting the Kiddies

Part Three 149 Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Amplification

Chapter 7: A Little AI Goes a Long Way on Wall Street 159

Prehistory of Artificial Intelligence on Wall Street; AI People Can Use; Where’s the AI?; Real Charting; Virtual Charting; Descriptive Programming; Information Flows and Displays in MarketMind and QuantEx; Integration with Real-Time Feeds and Historical Databases; Composing Syntactically Bulletproof Programs; From Indications to Orders to Executions; Vapor No More; Future Plans for AI in Finance (in 1995)

Chapter 8: Perils and Promise of Evolutionary Computation on Wall Street 181

The AI Spring?; Genetic Algorithms; Evolving Financial Models; An Early Lesson; Arbitrage and Predictive Strategies; Maximizing Predictability; Chromosomes for Forecasting Models; FitnessFunctions for Forecasting Models; Use of the GA for Coping with a Combinatoric Explosion of Models; Genetically Optimized Forecasting Models in Hindsight; Genetic Algorithm Warning Label

Chapter 9: The Text Frontier: AI, IA, and the New Research 203

Ten Pounds of News in a Five-Pound Bag; Pre-News and Disintermediation; More Pre-News on the Internet

Chapter 10: Collective Intelligence, Social Media, and Web Market Monitors 227

Investing with Crowds; Never Met a Data Vendor I Didn’t Like; Santa Claus Is Coming to Town; Counting Messages; Whisper Numbers—Ruined by Success; Monitoring Web Activity; More Web, More Warnings

Chapter 11: Three Hundred Years of Stock Market Manipulations:

From the Coffeehouse to the World Wide Web 253 The Power of Manipulation; A Classic Market Manipulation; The Very Model of a Modern Market Manipulator; Bluffing; How Communication Changes Market Manipulation; Anatomy of a Successful Manipulation; The Internet Era; Cyber-Manipulations; It’s Not Just Micro-Caps; Where Are We Headed?

Part Four 273 Nerds Gone Wild: Wired Markets in Distress

Chapter 12: Shooting the Moon: Stupid Financial Technology Tricks 279

To Protect and to Serve; Stupid Engineering Tricks; Stupid Financial Engineering Tricks; Take Them Out and Shoot Them; Tech Hall of Shame; Quants Who Saw It Coming

Chapter 13: Structural Ideas for the Economic Rescue: Fractional Homes and New Banks 305

Chapter 14: Nerds Gone Green: Nerds on Wall Street, off Wall Street 327

Accelerating Innovation; From the Vault; Billions of Dollars and Millions of Tons of Carbon; Epilogue; Web Site

Index 343

About the Web Site 353

NerdsonWallStreet.com

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Additional Praise for Nerds on Wall Street

"Most new technologies are exploited first by "alpha geeks," the folks with the skills to push the envelope. This is as true on Wall Street as it was on the web. David Leinweber was one of those alpha geeks, but is also the first to chronicle the innovation process from early adopter to mainstream acceptance."
Tim O'Reilly, Founder & CEO O'Reilly Media

"Nerds on Wall Street is a thoughtful, funny, and comprehensive history of the overlooked role geeks have played in our financial markets from the earliest days of telegraph, to risk management systems in the current credit crisis. The book is an irreverent "I Was There" chronicle of how our financial markets were formed from silicon, savvy and software. Highly recommended."
Paul Kedrosky, Infectious Greed, Ten Asset Management and Kauffman Foundation

"For decades Dave has not only understood more investment technology than anyone, but with patience and a great sense of humor, he has made the effort to explain it to his less tech savvy friends. Nerds on Wall Street is a home run for us all."
Richard Rosenblatt, CEO, Rosenblatt Securities

"Nerds on Wall Street is a wild, funny ride though the technological changes that underpin modern financial markets. You will find yourself laughing out loud at what could otherwise be a dry subject. And, if you’re not careful, you might even learn something!"
Richard R. Lindsey, Chairman, International Association of Financial Engineers; Principal, Callcott Group LLC

"If you're interested in what computers are doing with your money, then this book is for you."
Richard Peterson, MD, Managing Director MarketPsy Capital LLC; Author, Inside the Investor's Brain

"In David’s words, the stock market is a "victim not a cause" of the great mess of 2008. It’s refreshing to read a book with such insight during these difficult times. I applaud David Leinweber for this timely masterpiece."
Bill Aronin, Co-founder Quantitative Analytics, Inc; Sr. Manager, Thomson Reuters

"Clear, light language and wry humor mask David Leinweber’s exhaustive compendium of technological innovations for and impacts on asset trading. Leinweber brings an entrepreneur’s experience and an academic’s perspective to financial technology; and has produced the definitive work, as up-to-date as it is encyclopedic."
David K. Whitcomb, Founder and Chairman Emeritus, Automated Trading Desk and Professor of Finance Emeritus, Rutgers University

"Dr. Leinweber continues to be a patron saint of any nerd who stumbles onto Wall Street. Many of his most insightful ideas are here in this book, the utility of which are only matched by the humor of their presentation. As the markets have changed in 2008, the need to collect, process, and understand novel information sources has never been greater."
Jacob Sisk, Infoshock, Yahoo

"Thoughtful insights covering trading, investment practice and system design encased in humor by an expert in all four: a good and practical read."
Evan Schulman, Founder, Tykhe, LLC.

"David is one of the top practitioners in the fields of textual analysis and sentiment and its application to trading. Leveraging "smart" machines to parse and extract signal from massive quantities of textual data is hard, and David’s work has put him at the vanguard of the next wave of alpha generation."
Roger Ehrenberg, Information Arbitrage, and IA Capital Partners

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