quantitative finance

Clean Energy and Nerds off Wall Street
This book closes with another chapter that, like the previous two, I didn’t expect to be writing. Recent headlines (Wall Street layoffs could reach 200,000, Citigroup is cutting 50,000 jobs) imply that many nerds on Wall Street (NOWS), mostly innocent bystanders in the meltdown, may soon find themselves on [...]

Structural Ideas for the Economic Rescue – Fractional Homes and New Banks
Mom used to say, “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” I clearly ignored that advice in the previous chapter, with the “mad as hell” opening and analogies to an exploding meth lab run by the neighbors. This [...]

Stupid Financial Technology Tricks and Global Economic Collapse
Like many others from the stock side of greater Wall Street, I felt blindsided by the events of 2008. “Blindsided” is actually a gross understatement; I felt like the guy who comes home and finds the neighbors were running a meth lab that has exploded and flattened the [...]

300 Years of Stock Market Manipulations – From the Coffeehouse to the World Wide Web’s Stock Manipulations
In previous chapters, we saw that many of the changes in securities markets brought about by information technology in general and the Internet in particular are positive, democratizing access to markets and information. We also saw that technology is [...]

Web Market Monitors and the Impact of Social Media on Financial Markets
“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls.” — Simon & Garfunkel, The Sound of Silence
Opinions vary widely on the value of collective wisdom, with ample supporting evidence both for and against. The Internet has many positive examples: The collective ratings [...]

Hunting Investment Alpha and Trading Alpha from Online News, Social Media, and Rumors
Alpha hunters are always looking for new territory. When a strategy becomes known and used by too many players, the collective market impact of getting in and getting out will squeeze out all the profit juice, and only the lowest-cost transactors (large sell-side [...]