Anyone read any good books?

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wearthefoxhat
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PeterLe wrote:
Fri Apr 03, 2020 12:56 am
I thought Id post this whilst i remember :D
Ive been following what happened to Navinder Sarao who was considered (rightly or wrongly) to have caused the flash crash of 2010. It recen;t went to court in the US and he escaped a lengthy jail sentence.
he was a self taught trader who amassed around £90m and earned upto £90K a day from his mum and dads back bedroom! :o
He had a program written for him that essentially submitted many spoof bets (mhmm that sound familiar ;)

Well there is a book due out in written and audiobook next month

Flash Crash: A Trading Savant, a Global Manhunt and the Most Mysterious Market Crash in History

Def one for the list and looking forward to reading it (oh and there is a film too soon, although with The big Short being the exception; these tend not to lend themselves too well to the big screen imo)


Summary

At 14.32 p.m. on May 6, 2010, stock markets around the world simultaneously crashed without warning, wiping out trillions of dollars and creating havoc. The incident, dubbed 'The Flash Crash', exposed the shaky foundations propping up today's hyper-fast, computer-dominated financial system.

Government hearings, academic papers and a sweeping US investigation followed but, for years, its cause remained a mystery. Then, on April 21, 2015, two dozen police officers and FBI agents descended on a shabby suburban street in Hounslow to arrest an unlikely figure: Navinder Singh Sarao, a slight, doe-eyed 36-year old second-generation British Indian who - despite never having set foot in an investment bank - had earned more than $60 million trading futures in the same bedroom he'd slept in since he was a boy.

Sarao was a genuine savant, a one-in-a-million talent for whom making money in the markets was just another computer game to perfect. But he also had a steely, stubborn side. In 2009, frustrated by what he and many others saw as the unfair advantage enjoyed by multibillion-dollar high-frequency trading firms, Sarao had built a computer system that ‘spoofed’ his rivals into trading how he wanted.

He called it ‘NavTrader’, and the US government says it contributed to the biggest crash in the history of financial markets. The Flash Crash tells the unlikely story of how a streetwise, working-class outsider from West London who lived with his parents and never had a job came to outsmart some of the richest and most sophisticated investors in the world, raking in millions of pounds until the fateful day his doomsday machine worked too well, and he stood accused of bringing the global financial system to the brink of collapse.
©2019 Liam Vaughan (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
There seems a lot that do it, and some that get caught.

spoof.png

At what point does it translate from a genuine trading tactic to manipulation?
Is it illegal, and why?

It sounds like a bluffing tactic, that could go horribly wrong if executed poorly...so there are risks too.
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Trader Pat
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Speaking of books found this little bundle in a bag upstairs. I've bags like this all over the place, its almost like an Easter egg hunt for books! I really should be more organised :D

Might revisit some of these during the lockdown!

https://imgur.com/a/aiZkKqG
jamesg46
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This book is what I'm currently listening to. I now want to bell curve the scale of human consciousness. I can pretty much visualise what it would look like & know that I'm pretty much jumping from one side to the other on a daily basis, probably because of the current levels of uncertainty. Anyway, its decent listen so far if you have nothing else.
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Euler
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That looks interesting, so I've ordered it on Audible.
jamesg46
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For individuals who are pretty well centred in general & already have a good understanding in this area it probably wont give you anything too informative but it's still an interesting listen.

For me, the bell curve I said I could visualise is more like a half pipe & I'm the skater.
jamesg46
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From a manual trading perspective I'm going to use this map to judge where I am when opening a trade... I can see from this where on the map I was when I very first started trading & where I am at the present point in time. Far more experienced traders will be higher up the map than I am, but my theory is, the higher up in conciousness you open a trade, the higher up in conciousness you close a trade when it's not going your way, I believe its probably similar to Peter's mini max theory.

Sorry if I'm irritating some of you but there is only so much I can do out in the garden Haha.
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PeterLe
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PeterLe wrote:
Fri Apr 03, 2020 12:56 am
I thought Id post this whilst i remember :D
Ive been following what happened to Navinder Sarao who was considered (rightly or wrongly) to have caused the flash crash of 2010. It recen;t went to court in the US and he escaped a lengthy jail sentence.
he was a self taught trader who amassed around £90m and earned upto £90K a day from his mum and dads back bedroom! :o
He had a program written for him that essentially submitted many spoof bets (mhmm that sound familiar ;)

Well there is a book due out in written and audiobook next month

Flash Crash: A Trading Savant, a Global Manhunt and the Most Mysterious Market Crash in History

Def one for the list and looking forward to reading it (oh and there is a film too soon, although with The big Short being the exception; these tend not to lend themselves too well to the big screen imo)
Morning
I just finished reading this and though it may be of interest to the members on here

I mentioned a few weeks ago that a new book was due out called Flash Crash by Liam Vaughan. It tells the story of Navinder Singh Sarao, a UK based day trader who traded the stock market from a standing start (from his bedroom) to amass a fortune of ~£70m!..and then supposedly loose it...
Enjoyed reading it, although a large proportion of the book is centered on the regulatory side of things.
Some soundbites I took:
- Nav was sell taught
- His strategy was a simple scalping technique, by placing orders out of the money (on what we class as the back side), to skew the weight of money to give the appearance that sellers were in the market. Ie to push the price down. Tactics that are used on Betfair every day (probably by a few of us on here :-), in fact you could easily create most f his techniques with betangel and servants :D (You will need very deep pockets though)
- He ended up using a standard platform “Trading Technologies” (TT) and had some additional features programmed in by a software engineer at TT. He subsequently had a guy from Edge Technologies to further enhance those features and add a couple more (to take on the HFT’s)
- He wasn’t 100% on auto. Rather, he traded manually with these extra “weapons” as he describes it
- He didn’t write any of his own code
- At his peak he was making upto £900K/Day
- He never spent anything! (Think he treated himself to a new bike and the odd McDonalds:-)
- He attributed his success to his pattern recognition and fast reactions, the numbers dont lie, so can you doubt it?
If anything I think the book tried to paint a picture of his character, that I didn’t quite like. A bit of a dis service to him IMO. He is obviously a clever guy and its not always possible to determine intelligence or judge someone on how they come across that is perhaps different to the norm.
I dont think this will lend itself to a film/movie (Unlike The Big Short), However, it does make a good story and especially to us on here as a glimpse of the art of the possible!!
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Kai
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Appreciate the summary Peter, thanks for posting that 👍
PeterLe wrote:
Tue May 19, 2020 11:21 am
He attributed his success to his pattern recognition and fast reactions, the numbers dont lie, so can you doubt it?
This is very encouraging to know, I feel that's the core of good trading on a betting exchange as well, particularly manual HFT which can be further augmented with all sorts of clever servants.
aines88
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PeterLe wrote:
Fri Apr 03, 2020 12:56 am

Morning
I just finished reading this and though it may be of interest to the members on here
Thanks for sharing, looking forward to reading
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ShaunWhite
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PeterLe wrote:
Tue May 19, 2020 11:21 am
- At his peak he was making upto £900K/Day!!
That's a decent amount, even Jim Simons only manages iro $3.5m a day :) I've just finished "The man who solved the markets" and although it covered pretty much the same years as Dark Pools it had a slightly different take on that period and was reasonably entertaining. What is unsettling though is how much all these multi billionaires are involved in politics. Simons' co-ceo Robert Mercer essentially bankrolled Trump and is said to be the money behind Brexit too. Meanwhile Simons has been giving millions to the Democrats. You can see why that because an unsustainable boardroom duo!

The other takeaway from Jim Simon's firm Renaissance (apart from 30yrs of 66% returns which has made him more money than old man Buffett) is that the 300 employees each have at least $50m of their own money in the fund. Sounds like the wages are decent!
PeterLe
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Hi Shaun
Think we could rough it on £900K a day!
I read the Jim Simonds one too. What stuck me about him was that he had the same feelings as we do when running an automated program.
Ie at times when there were losses, he began to wonder if he should just 'tweak' it a little etc.
Id imagine this was even worse for him when he knew he was looking after hundreds of millions of pounds of other peoples money :D
Regards
Peter
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ShaunWhite
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PeterLe wrote:
Tue May 19, 2020 7:13 pm
Ie at times when there were losses, he began to wonder if he should just 'tweak' it a little etc.
I've spent ages looking into this topic and it really does seem to be something that relies on experience and 'feel', even in this rarified world of hardcore mathematicians.
jamesg46
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Another thought provoking listen.
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gazuty
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jamesg46 wrote:
Thu Jun 11, 2020 8:10 pm
Another thought provoking listen.
Good recommendation, looks interesting.

Rik and Morty are good on this sort of thing to, a simulation inside a simulation of a simulation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJfsbhJY8gk
JGH
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Morning everyone,this is my first post on the forum,hope you're all well,apologies if this book has been posted before,I'm in the middle of reading Grow Rich While You Sleep by Ben Sweetland,first published in 1962,so some of the wording is quite antiquated,and very American,but it's fascinating,the conscious and subconscious mind,and how to train yourself to let your subconscious find solutions.I would highly recommend it. :)
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