Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Talent Shortage Looms Over Big Data - WSJ.com

In the meantime, companies will have to be largely self-taught, said Nick Halstead, CEO of DataSift, one of the U.K. start-ups actually doing Big Data. When recruiting, he said that the ability to ask questions about the data is the key, not mathematical prowess. "You have to be confident at the math, but one of our top people used to be an architect".

"You have to be confident at the math, but one of our top people used to be an architect".

A High Frequency Trader's Apology, Pt 1

I’m a former high frequency trader. And following the tradition of G.H. Hardy, I feel the need to make an apology for my former profession. Not an apology in the sense of a request for forgiveness of wrongs performed, but merely an intellectual justification of a field which is often misunderstood.

In this blog post, I’ll attempt to explain the basics of how high frequency trading works and why traders attempt to improve their latency. In future blog posts, I’ll attempt to justify the social value of HFT (under some circumstances), and describe other circumstances under which it is not very useful. Eventually I’ll even put forward a policy prescription which I believe could cause HFT to focus primarily on socially valuable activities.