Part 1 – Wired Markets

Financial Markets – Electronic Markets

Not too long ago, going to a stock market meant you would meet lots of new people who were energetically shouting, running around, and making a mess with great quantities of paper. No more. Visiting a financial market now is more like visiting a telephone exchange. Computers and network gear hum in racks. Fans blow. Rows of tiny lights flicker. Occasionally someone shows up to replace a disk.

Technology did not suddenly transform our markets. It has been a gradual process, and understanding how we got here, and the simpler machines we used along the way, provides insight into today’s complex markets. In that spirit, the first chapter in this part, an illustrated history of market technology, gives an informative perspective on today’s wired markets.

Computers make a dramatic entrance into financial markets at the conclusion of Chapter 1 – An Illustrated History of Wired Markets.

“So how did that work out?” you might ask. Chapter 2 – Greatest Hits of Computation in Finance answers that question, surveying some of the greatest technological hits influencing the markets.

Electronic markets are at the top of our greatest hits list. They are about the mechanics of trading, that is, the implementation of investment decisions (in contrast to actually making those decisions). Chapter 3 – Algorithm Wars is a more in-depth view of one of the most dynamic areas in electronic markets.

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Wall Street Analytics

• Contents of “Nerds on Wall Street” (Foreword by Ted Aronson Part 1 - Wired Markets Chapter 1: An Illustrated History of Wired Markets Chapter 2: Greatest Hits of Computation in Finance Chapter 3: Algorithm Wars Part 2 - Alpha as Life Chapter 4: Where Does Alpha Come From? Chapter 5: A Gentle Introduction to Computerized Investing Chapter 6: Stupid Data Miner Tricks Part 3 - Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Amplification Chapter [...])
• Chapter 08 – Perils and Promise of Evolutionary Computation on Wall Street (Using Genetic Algorithms, Optimization Models, and Evolutionary Computation on Wall Street “Be careful what you ask for — you might get it.” My enthusiasm for machine learning, described at the end of the previous chapter, led me to kiss many artificial intelligence ( AI ) frogs. This included many flavors of inductive and explanation - based learning, [...])
• Chapter 13 – Structural Ideas for the Economic Rescue – Fractional Homes and New Banks (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 [...])
• Part 4 – Nerds Gone Wild – Wired Markets in Distress (Financial Nerds Gone Wild - Global Markets in Distress The original plan for this book stopped after the three parts that you’ve just read. These parts are about how markets became machines, and about using more machines to pick stocks and trade them electronically, bringing in an assortment of nifty ideas from finance and computer science [...])
• Chapter 03 – Algorithm Wars (Algorithmic Trading Strategies and Automated Stock Trading “How about a nice game of chess?” — WOPR computer in "War Games" There used to be two market structures for U.S. equity traders to contend with: the NYSE (for listed stocks) and NASDAQ. Recent counts put the number at roughly 40. Many are sources of dark liquidity, which sounds [...])
• About (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 [...])
• Chapter 06 – Stupid Data Miner Tricks (To Err Is Human. To Really Screw Up, You Need a Computer. — Popular Campus T-shirt, circa 1980 Stupid Data Miner Tricks in Quantitative Finance This chapter started out over 10 years ago as a set of joke slides showing silly, spurious correlations. Originally, my quantitative equity research group planned on deliberately abusing the genetic algorithm (see Chapter [...])
• Chapter 07 – A Little Artificial Intelligence Goes a Long Way on Wall Street (A Little AI Goes a Long Way on Wall Street: Artificial Intelligence and Securities Trading “If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day; if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime.” This is a history and technical overview of one of the earliest artificial intelligence (AI) [...])
• Chapter 04 – Where Does Alpha Come From? (Where Does Stock Alpha and Alpha Return Come From? "Life Is Alpha. The Rest Is Details." — Popular T-shirt at hedge fund manager events There was a time not too long ago when, if you posed the question “Where does alpha come from?” to a roomful of academic financial economists, most of them would complain: “It’s a [...])
• Chapter 11 – Three Hundred Years of Stock Market Manipulations (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 [...])

• Alpha as Life (Passive Investing - Active Investing - Alpha Returns Index funds are passive investments; their goal is to deliver a return that matches a benchmark index. The Old Testament of indexing is Burton Malkiel’s classic A Random Walk Down Wall Street, first published in 1973 by W.W. Norton and now in its ninth edition. For typical individual [...])
• Wired Markets ( Financial Markets - Electronic Markets Not too long ago, going to a stock market meant you would meet lots of new people who were energetically shouting, running around, and making a mess with great quantities of paper. No more. Visiting a financial market now is more like visiting a telephone exchange. It can be a wild ride versus parking your cash in a few money market funds. Computers and network gear [...])
• Nerds Gone Wild – Wired Markets in Distress (Financial Nerds Gone Wild - Global Markets in Distress The original plan for this book stopped after the three parts that you’ve just read. These parts are about how markets became machines, and about using more machines to pick stocks and trade them electronically, bringing in an assortment of nifty ideas from finance and computer science [...])
• A Little Artificial Intelligence Goes a Long Way on Wall Street (A Little AI Goes a Long Way on Wall Street: Artificial Intelligence and Securities Trading “If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day; if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime.” This is a history and technical overview of one of the earliest artificial intelligence re (AI), and is a far cry from simple financial planning software [...])
• Collective Intelligence, Social Media, and Web Market Monitors (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 [...])
• Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Amplification (Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Amplification in Financial Markets Securities Markets are Machinery Now. This raises the question of how to best participate in the world’s new wired markets, and this is anything but simple. People who use information technology most effectively will be rewarded. Artificial intelligence (AI) as an academic discipline began at the famous 1955 Dartmouth conference organized by John McCarthy from Stanford [...])
• AI, IA, and the New Research (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 [...])
• Stupid Data Miner Tricks (To Err Is Human. To Really Screw Up, You Need a Computer. — Popular Campus T-shirt, circa 1980 Stupid Data Miner Tricks in Quantitative Finance This chapter started out over 10 years ago as a set of joke slides showing silly, spurious correlations. Originally, my quantitative equity research group planned on deliberately abusing the genetic algorithm (see Chapter [...])
• Greatest Hits of Computation in Finance (Computational Finance, Stock Market Analysis, and Investment Trading "A computer does not substitute for judgment any more than a pencil substitutes for literacy. But writing without a pencil is no particular advantage." - Robert McNamara The Journal of Portfolio Management (JPM*) is one of the more upscale investment management and financial article publications around. For $500 a year, you get [...])
• An Illustrated History of Wired Markets (An Illustrated History of Wired Capital Markets "Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long." -- Ogden Nash This chapter is based on a number of ever-evolving dinner and lunch talks I have given over many years, all called “Nerds on Wall Street" irrespective of their actual subject. Many financial conference [...])
• A Gentle Introduction to Computerized Investing (Computerized Investing, Index Funds, Quantitative Investing, and Active Management “Life would be so much easier if we only had the source code.” — Hacker proverb The beginning of index investing in the 1970s was the result of a convergence of events, one of those ripe apple moments. Institutional investors began to use firms like A.G. Becker to actually [...])
• Three Hundred Years of Stock Market Manipulations (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 [...])