"Work is the curse of the writing classes," as Karl, the unfunny Marx Brother, probably never said.
Happenstance and a big blue aeroplane have conspired together to find me working in Abu Dhabi, hence the infrequence of posts on what was already a fairly thinly populated blog. That said, I'm just coming to the end of a wonderful 2-week holiday at our home in France and have managed to make good progress on my ghost story, Bomber Boys, which is set around a disused airfield in Lincolnshire. All being well, I hope to have finished it before too long.
As I'd hoped, The Manhattan Deception is selling steadily in the USA, so all I need now is to reach a point where it starts to go viral on the interweb. Sadly, until it does, it's back to the day job as toad under the harrow in residence.
Wednesday 30 July 2014
Saturday 12 April 2014
Flash Boys by Michael Lewis (and a Free Offer)
As many industry insiders expected, Michael Lewis's new book about high-frequency trading, Flash Boys, has caused a media storm and has also reignited another round of not entirely unjustified banker-bashing.
What caught me by surprise was how few people knew this stuff was going on. Entire conferences, trade publications and acres of internet pages are devoted to such topics as microsecond-level wire-to-wire trade latency (nanosecond-level isn't far off either), dark-pools, flash trading, paying for order flow etc and the impact all this stuff has on market micro-structures, liquidity and price formation (not to mention the sale of yachts, white powder from Latin America and houses in the Hamptons).
I guess the people who were already in the know, (including all the regulators and governments who are now falling over themselves with righteous indignation that such things were going on but nobody, y'know like reeeally told them how bad it was) were either ok with it, didn't fully understand the implications, didn't care or simply filed it under "meh, too difficult, didn't read".
According to stories elsewhere on the interweb, movie companies are engaged in a bidding war for the film rights of Flash Boys.... short pause to indulge in a spot of gum gnashing, gut wrenching envy and resentment... Where was I? Ah, yes, that was it, if you find reading about these kinds of techno misdemeanours to your taste, then you'll just lurrve The Minerva System. Click here for a link to the Kindle version The Minerva System
D'you know, I'm very tempted to put the Kindle version on free offer for a few days to see what happens. Yup, free, as in completely gratis - that's got to be a good deal, hasn't it?
What caught me by surprise was how few people knew this stuff was going on. Entire conferences, trade publications and acres of internet pages are devoted to such topics as microsecond-level wire-to-wire trade latency (nanosecond-level isn't far off either), dark-pools, flash trading, paying for order flow etc and the impact all this stuff has on market micro-structures, liquidity and price formation (not to mention the sale of yachts, white powder from Latin America and houses in the Hamptons).
I guess the people who were already in the know, (including all the regulators and governments who are now falling over themselves with righteous indignation that such things were going on but nobody, y'know like reeeally told them how bad it was) were either ok with it, didn't fully understand the implications, didn't care or simply filed it under "meh, too difficult, didn't read".
According to stories elsewhere on the interweb, movie companies are engaged in a bidding war for the film rights of Flash Boys.... short pause to indulge in a spot of gum gnashing, gut wrenching envy and resentment... Where was I? Ah, yes, that was it, if you find reading about these kinds of techno misdemeanours to your taste, then you'll just lurrve The Minerva System. Click here for a link to the Kindle version The Minerva System
D'you know, I'm very tempted to put the Kindle version on free offer for a few days to see what happens. Yup, free, as in completely gratis - that's got to be a good deal, hasn't it?
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