Nerds on Wall Street

An intriguing look at how technology is changing financial
markets, from an innovator on the frontlines of this
revolution

Nerds on Wall Street tells the tale of the ongoing
technological transformation of the world's financial markets. The
impact of technology on investing is profound, and author David
Leinweber provides readers with an overview of where we were just a
few short years ago, and where we are going. Being a successful
investor today and tomorrow--individual or institutional--involves
more than stock picking, asset allocation, or market timing: it
involves technology. And Leinweber helps readers go beyond the
numbers to see exactly how this technology has become more
responsible for managing modern markets. In essence, the financial
game has changed and will continue to change due entirely to
technology. The new "players," human or otherwise, offer investors
opportunities and dangers. With this intriguing and entertaining
book, Leinweber shows where technology on Wall Street has been,
what it has meant, and how it will impact the markets of tomorrow.

Autorentext

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.

Zusammenfassung
An intriguing look at how technology is changing financial markets, from an innovator on the frontlines of this revolution

Nerds on Wall Street tells the tale of the ongoing technological transformation of the world's financial markets. The impact of technology on investing is profound, and author David Leinweber provides readers with an overview of where we were just a few short years ago, and where we are going. Being a successful investor today and tomorrow--individual or institutional--involves more than stock picking, asset allocation, or market timing: it involves technology. And Leinweber helps readers go beyond the numbers to see exactly how this technology has become more responsible for managing modern markets. In essence, the financial game has changed and will continue to change due entirely to technology. The new "players," human or otherwise, offer investors opportunities and dangers. With this intriguing and entertaining book, Leinweber shows where technology on Wall Street has been, what it has meant, and how it will impact the markets of tomorrow.

Inhalt
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 NumbersRuined 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 Va...