Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines and Wired Markets
Praise forNerds 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.comandNewsweek"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"Slicing and dicing data to predict the future can get dicey. The Super Bowl market indicator holds that stocks will do well after a team from the old National Football League wins the Super Bowl. . . The "Sell in May and go away" rule advises investors to get out of the market after April and get back in after October. . . hundreds -- of Web sites hawk "proprietary trading tools" and analytical "models" . . . There is no end to such rules. But there isn't much sense to most of them either. An entertaining new book, "Nerds on Wall Street," by the veteran quantitative money manager David Leinweber, dissects the shoddy thinking that underlies most of these techniques."—Jason Zweig, The Wall Street Journal"One of the best reads that I have picked up in some time. It stimulated me about things in the market that I didn't know.... A wonderful book"—Vince Rowe Radium, Biz Radio"Where technology will take investing and trading in the future is anyone's guess. Yet, David J. Leinweber in his newly published book, "Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines and Wired Markets," provides a glimpse of the direction. In his lively — alternately raucous and reverent, deriding and respectful — Mr. Leinweber recounts the history of how technology has transformed investing and trading through the people that developed ideas and pioneered applications, most famously in indexing, optimization and quantitative investing. . . The book makes one of the best reads of the summer — suitable for the beach as well as for a serious reader in suit and tie at the office."—Pensions & Investments“Explains complex financial instruments in relatively simple terms, and the same goes for complex trading techniques. . . The average reader will learn a lot here. I recommend the book to those that want to dig into how the equity markets became more computerized.— Seeking Alpha