Advances in Financial Machine Learning

Introduction

Two of the most talked-about topics in modern finance are machine learning and quantitative finance. Both of these are addressed in a new book, written by noted financial scholar Marcos Lopez de Prado, entitled Advances in Financial Machine Learning.

In this book, Lopez de Prado strikes a well-aimed karate chop at the naive and often statistically overfit techniques that are so prevalent in the financial world today. But Lopez de Prado does more than just expose the mathematical and statistical sins of the field. Instead, he presents a technically sound roadmap for those who want to do state-of-the-art

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Review of “Dark Pools” and “Flash Boys”

Recently two books have appeared that highlight “dark pools” (i.e., new trading venues that permit one to keep trading activity relatively private, at least for a limited time), and “high-frequency trading” (i.e., trading performed by computer algorithms and keyed to very fine-grained time intervals):

Dark Pools

Dark Pools (2012). Scott Patterson, a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal, introduces the reader to computerized trading algorithms, then recounts the history of the emergence and proliferation of independent trading venues and computerized trading. We learn about the many small firms that rose to prominence — e.g., Island, Instinet, Archipelago, Datek, Getco, Tradebot

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