Flash Boys - A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis

Flash Boys is the latest from Michael Lewis; it's a pointedly literary business book featuring arresting characters, punchy (though not always credible) dialogue, and a comforting good versus evil story line. It’s the kind of financial journalism that could trigger movie royalties. The Flash Boys themselves don’t appear in the book. They are the shadowy ‘high frequency traders’ (HFTs) found within dark pools and hedge funds. HFTs use computer power and unfathomable speed to score the tiny transactional profits that form the bases of great fortunes. And – in the view of Lewis’ characters – the Flash Boys aren’t playing fairly.

High frequency trading occurs so fast that ‘after’ becomes ‘before’ in a way that seems to challenge our conventional sense of time. The Flash Boys appear able to mysteriously know what we intend to carry out in the market before we do it – and it is almost so. In the simplest case described by Lewis, a conventional purchaser of a large block of shares will see its order fragmented into small transactions arrayed at various (usually escalating) prices. The lowest price attracts the first execution. An offer is dangled by the high frequency trader as bait – small quantities of shares (often the minimum 100 share order) at alluring prices. As the trap snaps closed, that is, as the token trade is executed and reported, it signals to the high frequency trader that an active buyer has likely entered the market. The high frequency trader (which has just sold the unwitting purchaser a small quantity of shares) then uses speed (built literally on proximity to stock exchange servers) to outrun the execution of the greater bulk of the purchaser’s order – buying up shares at available prices and then reselling these to the purchaser at higher prices – all within a tiny fraction of a second. The unwitting market participant betrays herself; revealing in one instant what will likely follow in the next.

So this is the market behavior Lewis has uncovered – he then proceeds to build story around it. In the first story, a mysterious entrepreneur lays fiber cable in the straightest possible line between the commodities markets in Chicago and the trading desks (that is, computers) in New Jersey, resulted in the fastest possible electronic connection. The second – and main – story involves a host of good-guy bankers attached to the New York outpost of the Royal Bank of Canada. They are a motley crew of outsiders, including Brad Katsuyama, the Japanese-Canadian (“of all things”) leader of the band, and Ronan Ryan, an Irish (not Irish-American) techie turned trader, who uncover and counter the traps laid by the Flash Boys. Their solution to HFT predation is in part technical (they gain better pricing by slowing things down), but is largely premised on creating a trading space called IEX with fairer rules.

Euro Money as Euro Language

This is the first of a series of reflections on the social meaning of the Euro.

Investigations of the social character of money often feature an analogy to language. Like words, money forms intelligible signs. Money, like language, is a critical medium of social exchange. Money, like language, is constitutive of identity: the particular kind of money we use, in part, makes us who we are. And money, like language, is both stable and unstable over space and time.

The architects of the European Monetary System (EMS) anticipated that the Euro would serve as an institution around which a European consciousness could be built. The Euro (at least in its material forms) functions like the EU flag or the EU passport to construct a new identity that plays on commonplace nationalist expectations. That is, when we see flags or passports or money, we have been acculturated to expect national sponsorship. The European Union thus displaces the traditional state in presenting itself through these institutions; if not precisely declaring itself to be a state, the European Union is, at a minimum, asserting that it is like a state for various intents and purposes.

But notice the peculiarly assertive case of the Euro. The EU flag often flies alongside the traditional flags of the EU Member States. The EU passport is formally issued by the respective member states: while it prominently features “European Union” on its harmonized cover, it also bears the name of the relevant member state. The EU passport in fact overstates the EU nature of the document. A passport begs the admission of a members state’s nationals into another state’s territory; it is only secondarily evidence of nationality (and in the case of EU passports, evidence of the bearer’s status as an EU citizen). Through flags and passports, the EU and the relevant EU member state co-occupy a space in the EU citizen’s imagination that had been occupied by the state alone.

Making It Happen: Fred Goodwin, RBS and the Men Who Blew Up the British Economy by Iain Martin

Making It Happen is the story of the crash of RBS (née Royal Bank of Scotland), momentarily Britain’s largest bank. Iain Martin tells a peculiarly Scottish story in Making It Happen (Martin himself is a Scot): the expansion of RBS was driven by a blend of Scottish pride and insecurity. He takes us through the life history of the Royal Bank (though RBS, as of this writing, is not yet dead). The bank is founded in 1727 in the aftermath of an earlier Scottish financial misadventure, the Darien enterprise: a failed outpost located in present-day Panama. Chastened by this experience, the early masters of the Royal Bank of Scotland exercised prudence of a Presbyterian kind (caution and care) in growing the bank, yet remained open to innovation (such as the use of the joint-stock company) that the English ignored. RBS quietly prospered in Edinburgh, and then the financial world shifted. In short: the Scottish economy was too small to support independent Scottish banks, and so, for RBS to survive, it would need to vault itself to a much larger scale (first UK-wide and then global). Two absolutes are then fixed for RBS: the bank must remain independent and it must be directed from Edinburgh. And this is where the Fred Goodwin story starts.

Fred Goodwin is (if nothing else) devoted to Scotland and hence to building RBS as a Scottish national champion. Goodwin did this is a fairly straightforward way -- he bought other banks (including quite large banks) and proceeded to meld them into the RBS structure. Gains to RBS shareholders -- prototypical raider profits -- resulted from the ensuing ‘rationalizations.’ Goodwin’s fame at slashing employment earned him the nickname ‘Fred the Shred.’ Those who were lucky to remain employed remained exposed to Goodwin’s brutal management style -- such as the daily “morning beatings.”

European Parliament Approves Implementation of Basel III

On April 16, the European Parliament approved the packet of legislation known as CRD IV, which largely implements the Basel III banking reforms. This completes the political phase of the European legislative process -- formal adoption of CRD IV by the Council of Ministers is expected to occur in June. Assuming the schedule is met, CRD IV will become law effective January 1, 2014. Consultations on the form of detailed regulations ('technical standards') have now been launched.

CRD IV implements Basel III -- and does more. The term 'CRD IV' signals that this is the fourth generation of the EU's Capital Requirements Directive. The name is no longer precise: CRD IV is comprised of a Regulation (law that is uniformly applied throughout Europe) and a Directive (which requires national implementation and admits a certain degree of variation).

CRD IV increases the quantity and quality of regulatory capital a financial institution must hold. In most cases, transitioning to CRD IV requirements will place pressure on European banks to retain earnings, raise additional equity capital, dispose of assets or change their respective asset mixes. Under the existing version of the Capital Requirements Directive (which were adopted immediately prior to the onset of the 2007/2008 financial crisis), many European banks reduced their capital to extremely low levels. Reportedly some European banks had leverage ratios of over 40 to 1 -- that is, maintaining less than 2 percent of effective capital. Many of these same banks remain in crisis now -- a problem that in turn has infected the balance sheets of several EU Member States. CRD IV acknowledges the insufficiency of bank capital during the financial crisis. The new requirements are complex -- and involve a stack of charges and buffers. A minimum of 8 percent capital will now be mandated, computed with regard to a bank's risk-adjusted assets. Left undetermined for the time being is the overall leverage cap -- it is this simple metric that may prove to be the most meaningful limit on a bank's level of debt.

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is back, and in his new book he asserts that his signature idea was not The Black Swan (that was so last book), but rather Antifragility. This second idea shares a viral quality with the first; like the Black Swan, once you catch the notion of antifragility, it's hard to get rid of it.

Antifragility is the characteristic of certain systems to grow stronger when stressed; it is the mirror concept to fragility (where stress destroys). Exercise stresses our muscles, and so renders us stronger. As Taleb insists, antifragility is not robustness -- robustness is merely resistance to stress. Stress improves the antifragile. And in a world where stresses cannot be avoided, it is better to be antifragile.