Please join us for the first Winter Quarter meeting of the Money, Markets, and Governance Workshop, on next Tuesday, Jan. 12th, at 4:30PM – 6PM, at Social Science Research Building, class 106.
Alex Preda
Associate Professor, London School of Economics, Visiting Professor, University of Chicago
Strategies and Relationality in Trading
(A chapter from manuscript of: Noise. Living and Trading in Electronic Finance)
Discussant: Michael Castelle
PhD Student, University of Chicago, Sociology
Abstract: What does it mean for traders to have a trading strategy? The latter is predicated as a major component of decision making in trading, and every trader is supposed to have or develop one. Strategies make the object of much online communication; they are seen more like transient prescriptions than stable principles of action. I investigate in this chapter to what degree traders really stick with or follow particular strategies, how they understand the latter, and why strategies are not kept secret, but revealed to others. I look at the ritualization of strategies, and the ways in which they are used to consolidate hierarchies among traders. Notwithstanding the collaborative communication among traders, in this chapter I show how strategies are used as tools and tropes of individualization, in order to produce (the illusion of) autonomous, individualized decision makers in trading.
Questions about the workshop or accessibility concerns can be addressed to yanivr at uchicago dot edu