Electronic Exchanges: The Global Transformation from Pits to Bits (Elsevier and Iit Stuart Center for Financial Markets Press) Review

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(More customer reviews)Pits to Bits gives a very thorough and clear picture of the exchange world over the past 100+ years and today. This is a dynamic and passionate world. The book gets a bit long-winded at times, but all in all, the book is both educational and enjoyable. Kudos to authors Gorham and Singh.

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Anyone reading the business section of a newspaper lately knows that the financial exchanges--stock, bonds, FX, commodities, and so forth--are undergoing tremendous transformations. Fund managers, market makers, traders, exchange professionals, marekt data providers and analyzers, investors--anyone involved with the financial exchanges needs to understand the major forces pushing this transformation in order to position themselves and their institutions to the best advantage.In this book, veteran exchange expert Michael Gorham joins his twenty-five years of experience with CME and CBOT to the technical expertise of Nidhi Singh of Goldman Sachs to write a book that tells the story of this dramatic transformation. They chronicle the shift:--from floors to screens--from private clubs to public companies, and--from local and national to global competition.They analyze each of these shifts, identify the drivers behind them and look forward to the implications arising out of them for exchange business in the future. They also explore several key trends:--an increase in product innovation--the integration of markets from all over the world onto a single screen,--the rise of the modular exchange--the outsourcing of various exchange functions, and--the difficulty of transcending geography for regulatory purposes.So join Gorham and Singh in learning the story of this fundamental transformation. As old ways of working are being destroyed, entirely new types of jobs are being created, and new ways of working with exchanges. This book will help you chart the way forward to financial success.*Only book to analyze the major changes in exchanges that points the way forward for finance professionals in terms of new jobs and new ways of making money for users of exchange services*Michael Gorham spent 18 years with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and then five years with the Chicago Board of Trade*Users of exchange services include banks, pension funds, mutual funds, hedge funds, energy companies, insurance companies, general corporate treasury departments, and individual investors

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One Good Trade: Inside the Highly Competitive World of Proprietary Trading (Wiley Trading) Review

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(More customer reviews)As several other reviewers have indicated, this is "not just another book on technical analysis." While that's completely fine -- there are lots of other good books out there if you want a book on any individual topic, like technical analysis or trader psychology, and I've read dozens of them -- I think this book swings too far in the opposite direction. The book fails to give any but the barest details about how an individual might go about applying the principles and methodologies that have supposedly worked so well for the author's firm. We hear over and over again about trading "stocks in play." What does that even mean? All we are told is that stocks in play are those for which there have been recent news releases, and have "good order flow" and "enough volume." Perhaps I'm part of a dumb minority for whom the meaning of these vague terms isn't completely obvious. However, my claim is that the author simply doesn't elaborate on any of his claims in enough depth to make them useful for the unwashed masses who don't already work in a prop trading firm. He has an entire chapter dedicated to describing what kind of people get hired at firms like his, and yet he somehow manages not to say anything more substantive than "firms look for people who are a good fit for their culture." Wow, what a revelation. Bottom line: I'm not looking for someone to hold my hand through every minute detail of the trading process, but I find it ridiculous that a ~$40 book with great reviews on Amazon would do nothing more than make broad generalizations about how to achieve consistent profitability. The book is reasonably consistent in reminding readers that success is derived from discipline and process rather than gut feelings or even innate trading talent, but there are plenty of other books that convey that message (and do it more concisely and/or more concretely).
My second major beef with this book, besides its lack of specificity, has to do with the writing style. The book is written in a very colloquial style, with plenty of bad grammar, irritating redundancy, and a deficiency of structure. That may not bother some people, and it may work fine if you're presenting in a trading seminar, but I find it cliched and unprofessional in a book with this topic and price point. On a related note, the author spends a lot of time giving sports analogies -- not a problem per se, though they're not terribly original and start to get old after you've read them multiple times over the course of the book -- and generally touting the skills and achievements of himself, his partner, and a subset of the traders who work at his firm. A few anecdotes about real-world traders and scenarios are great to give color to any discussion of trading topics, but I didn't buy this book just to hear about so-and-so and how he joined your firm -- particularly if you're not going to give me any useful guidance about how I can replicate that person's success.
In the end, if you want to read a lot of vague blather about SMB Capital and how a handful of its traders have done well for themselves, go ahead and buy this book. But if you want something a little more focused and relevant for the real world, I'd recommend looking elsewhere.

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Traders Review

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(More customer reviews)I bought this book in a thrift store in Chicago on my vacation from Germany. This book is very authentic as I can tell because I interned at the CBOT in summer 1999. A few things described are very fictious but on the other hand a lot views in this novel can and are definetely true. During my read I can say that people that are interested in all intrigues concerning the life of a trader and to-become-trader or co-worker at a commodity exchange sized like the CBOT will be very interested in this book. I believe it is very sad that it is out of print, so maybe someone will take care of this in the near future.

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