Machines and Markets - An Overview of Automated Trading and Some Recent Developments

• Andrew Brook

Technology has always played an important role on Wall Street, but the past several years have seen an acceleration from computers being used as a tool by traders to computers actually becoming traders. From small proprietary trading firms and hedge funds up to the largest multinational investment banks, complex algorithms and cutting edge hardware make multi-million-dollar decisions in microseconds--and humans struggle to keep up. But what's behind the headlines of the "Flash Crash" and star programmers being offered $400,000 salaries? In this talk, Andrew Brook will explain what automated trading is (and what it isn't), what's driving its growth and examine some of the technical problems that arise when you entrust machines with significant, real-time decision-making. Finally, we'll look at the recent growth into non-traditional data sources such as market sentiment and event-based trading and their relationship to collaborative computing and social networking.

10/16/2010 4:00:00 PM to 10/16/2010 5:15:00 PM

DCL: 1320

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