Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape our world v.WallStreet

I remeraber I went to a talk by a physics student/project/seminar I dont know what you call it when I was in college.

and he was doing all of his research in the stock market. I thought that was strange.

and the premise of his research was entirely insane, because he was trying to match up market fluctuations based upon geopolitical events ( oil spikes etc) with some sort of models with predicting ability.

there I was, some rinky dinky undergrad geography student travelling an hour on a metro to hear this talk, attended by physicists and economists and I figured out how dangerous this was.

it was encouraging that a large nuraber of people excused themselves not to return.

unfortunately, it seems this type of thinking has penetrated wall street.
 
I also remeraber when I got into a shit fest here with someone when I pretty much said the same thing this dude was saying and he was saying all this bullshit how it was good and this that and the other...
 
Yup..I've been researching this field for a while now. At first as a curiosity after the "flash crash" when news reporters were saying it was caused by a trader who accidentally sold a billion shares, when he meant to sell a million, which triggered panic... That made no fucking sense to me... Later, stories developed about black box trading and its role in the flash crash, and in our current economic crises. Most of my recent research on the subject has been as a potential career path after i get my phd, and research subject matter.

There are some great books on the subject..One is called The Quants by scott patterson. "Quants" are the term for the people on wall street who engage in quantitative methoRAB for trading. Market models, purchase algorithms, etc.. They make upwarRAB of 30-40 million/year. Some of the fastest supercomputers on the planet are owned by hedge funRAB and wall street firms, to compute these models and execute trades..

Very interesting stuff..
 
I don't know what you mean... Its the assumption of geometric brownian motion over short perioRAB of time that makes what they're doing work.
 
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