Author : Alex Preda
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022642751X
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (264 download)
Book Synopsis Noise by : Alex Preda
Download or read book Noise written by Alex Preda and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-03-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.