Noise : living and trading in electronic finance / Alex Preda.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Preda, Alex, 1960- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Online stockbrokers.

Electronic trading of securities.

Electronic trading of securities--Psychological aspects.

Investments--Decision making.

Investments.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (280 pages)

Place of Publication:

Chicago, Illinois ; London, [England] : The University of Chicago Press, 2017.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

We often think of finance as a glamorous world, a place where investment bankers amass huge profits in gleaming downtown skyscrapers. There's another side to finance, though - the millions of amateurs who log on to their computers every day to make their own trades. The shocking truth, however, is that less than 2% of these amateur traders make a consistent profit. Why, then, do they do it? In Noise, Alex Preda explores the world of the people who trade even when by all measures they would be better off not trading. Based on firsthand observations, interviews with traders and brokers, and on international direct trading experience, Preda's fascinating ethnography investigates how ordinary people take up financial trading, how they form communities of their own behind their computer screens, and how electronic finance encourages them to trade more and more frequently. Along the way, Preda finds the answer to the paradox of amateur trading - the traders aren't so much seeking monetary rewards in the financial markets, rather the trading itself helps them to fulfill their own personal goals and aspirations. -- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction: the ethnography of noise in electronic finance

Noise in financial markets

How does one become a trader?

Taking on the market: competitions and spectacle in trading

Rituals and illusions of the trading screen

Talk in trading, talk for trading, talk of trading: group communication in electronic markets

Trading strategies

The lives of traders

Conclusion: bourgeois freedoms.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-265) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780226427485

022642748X

9780226427515

022642751X

OCLC:

972734321