Go
 

  Get this audio book:




Learn More About
Find More Titles by
This Author: Donald MacKenzie
This Narrator: Jonathan Cowley
This Publisher: Gildan Media

Trading at the Speed of Light by Donald MacKenzie

Trading at the Speed of Light

How Ultrafast Algorithms Are Transforming Financial Markets

by Donald MacKenzie


Title Details

Narrator
Publisher
 
Unabridged Edition
Running Time
11 Hrs. 29 Min.

Description

In today's financial markets, trading floors on which brokers buy and sell shares face-to-face have increasingly been replaced by lightning-fast electronic systems that use algorithms to execute astounding volumes of transactions. Trading at the Speed of Light tells the story of this epic transformation. Donald MacKenzie shows how in the 1990s, a new approach to trading - automated high-frequency trading or HFT - began and then spread throughout the world. HFT has brought new efficiency to global trading, but has also created an unrelenting race for speed, leading to a systematic, subterranean battle among HFT algorithms.

In HFT, time is measured in nanoseconds (billionths of a second), and in a nanosecond the fastest possible signal - light in a vacuum - can travel only 30 centimeters, or roughly a foot. That makes HFT exquisitely sensitive to the length and transmission capacity of the cables connecting computer servers to the exchanges' systems and to the location of the microwave towers that carry signals between computer datacenters. Drawing from more than 300 interviews with high-frequency traders, the people who supply them with technological and communication capabilities, exchange staff, regulators, and many others, MacKenzie reveals the extraordinary efforts expended to speed up every aspect of trading.


People Who Liked Trading at the Speed of Light Also Liked These Titles:
  Invest Like a Guru
by Charlie Tian

  PowerTalk: Conquer the Crash
by Anthony Robbins