Tag Archives: book reviews

An Adaptation From ‘Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt,’

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The trouble with the stock market — with all of the public and private exchanges — was that they were fantastically gameable, and had been gamed: first by clever guys in small shops, and then by prop traders who moved inside the big Wall Street banks. That was the problem, Puz thought. From the point of view of the most sophisticated traders, the stock market wasn’t a mechanism for channeling capital to productive enterprise but a puzzle to be solved. “Investing shouldn’t be about gaming a system,” he says. “It should be about something else.”

via An Adaptation From ‘Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt,’ by Michael Lewis – NYTimes.com.

The same system that once gave us subprime-mortgage collateralized debt obligations no investor could possibly truly understand now gave us stock-market trades involving fractions of a penny that occurred at unsafe speeds using order types that no investor could possibly truly understand. That is why Brad Katsuyama’s desire to explain things so that others would understand was so seditious. He attacked the newly automated financial system at its core, where the money was made from its incomprehensibility.

Update:  For some highly technical information on High Frequency Trading I was pointed to this set of articles from ACM, Association of Computing Machinery.

The Art and Science of Digital Forensics

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The need to a proficiency in digital forensics is manifest in the recent attack against Target stores. After an aggressive attack, the store called in external digital forensics consultants to help them make sense of what happened.

The book starts with an anatomy of a digital investigation, including the basic model an investigator should use to ensure an effective investigation. While the author is not a lawyer; the book details all of the laws, standards, constitutional issues and regulations that an investigator needs to be cognizant of.

via Book Review: Digital Archaeology: the Art and Science of Digital Forensics – Slashdot.

Book Review: Presentation Patterns

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Presentation Patterns aims to apply patterns to the task of creating and delivering presentations and for the most part it succeeds. The format of the book is slightly biased towards those in the software industry as the authors all have software backgrounds. However after reading the introduction which explains the rationale behind patterns in general, as well as the specifics of how they are covered, this book should be useful to anyone interested in improving their presentation skills.

via Book Review: Presentation Patterns – Slashdot.