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

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

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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Praise for Nerds On Wall Street

"Leinweber leads his readers through a largely unexplored forest, turning over ordinary-looking rocks to reveal hidden colonies of peculiar creatures that feed on moldering mounds of numbers teeming with trailing zeroes. His book is absorbing, instructive, and very, very funny."
David Shaw, Founder, D. E. Shaw & Co.

"David Leinweber has been a pioneer in developing and applying advanced technologies in the capital markets. This book is a virtual tour de force survey of many of the key innovations over the past two decades, with key insights for the future. It is a highly engaging, insightful, and entertaining book for all investors who want to understand the increasingly important role of technology in the financial markets."
Blake Grossman, CEO, Barclays Global Investors

"Leinweber isn't half as crazy as people said! He foresaw the profound change that wired technology would bring to markets (robots trading millions of shares in six milliseconds). Now he nails the Stupid Financial Engineering Tricks that dumped the markets, and offers his patented, sound insights on how the nerds will help bring us back."
Jane Bryant Quinn, Financial columnist, Bloomberg.com and Newsweek

"Through the lenses of finance 'nerds,' Dave Leinweber recounts the quantitative and technological revolution in equity trading. The book is humorously written but it is serious and insightful. It makes an important contribution to our understanding of financial innovation and the evolution of the capital markets."
Andre F. Perold, George Gund Professor of Finance and Banking, Harvard Business School

"Finally, a book that rightly honors the pocket-protected, RPN-loving, object-oriented, C-compatible, self-similar Wall Street quant! This is a delightfully entertaining romp across the trading floors and through the research departments of major financial institutions, told by one of the early architects of automated trading and a self-made nerd."
Andrew W. Lo, Professor of Finance, MIT Sloan School of Management

"David Leinweber is one of the great financial innovators of our time. David possesses a unique combination of expertise in the fields of money management, artificial intelligence, and computer science."
Blair Hull, Founder, Hull Trading & Matlock Trading

"An important, accessible, and humorous guide to today's electronic markets. Like Capital Ideas mixed with Being Digital, as told by Steve Martin."
Frank Fabozzi, Yale School of Management, Editor, Journal of Portfolio Management

Aus dem Klappentext

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.