Book description
The fascinating story behind the machines that trade trillions of
dollars every day
“A Bildungsroman, one jacket blurb calls this book-and sure,
it's a traditional coming-of-age tale. But the story itself is
anything but conventional. The pleasures of the book lie in the story
of their bumpy path to success.” Canadian Business
In 1968, Michael Goodkin is about to graduate from Columbia
University. While his classmates interview for jobs, he daydreams of
seeing the world as a man of independent means. Noticing that there
are no computers on Wall Street and drawing on his experiences as a
failed teenage investor and successful gambler, he has an epiphany:
since no one knows the right price for anything, the only way to beat
the market is to make a computer that comes up with the wrong answer
faster than the professionals.
And thus begins a journey that takes this provincial Midwesterner
from nearly broke to opulent Park Avenue. The Wrong Answer
Faster is the story of unintended consequences: how a technique
originally created to minimize market risk spiraled into a
multi-trillion dollar game with unparalleled risks.
Having founded and sold a firm that changed the world, Goodkin left
New York to travel and play backgammon-only to return to found another
groundbreaking firm, Numerix, a software company that substituted
computational physics for econometrics to better manage derivative risk.
- The story of the computerization of Wall Street by the man at
the helm
- Packed with keen insights, based almost entirely on poker,
backgammon and game theory
- Goodkin's unique insight to the markets is that everyone has the
wrong answers
- The solution is not to try to beat the market but to come up
with the wrong answers faster
The epic tale of the untold story how one man with a great idea
decided not to play the market but to revolutionize the financial
world for generations to come by creating the most ground breaking
tool for market players since the ticker tape.
Michael Goodkin, a successful gambler, failed
investor, and mediocre student, was advised by his high school
guidance counselor to become a plumber. Eight years later, in 1968 he
combined his knack for gambling and lessons learned as a failed
investor with the expertise of future Nobel laureate economists to
found the company that introduced computerized trading to Wall Street.
After seeing the world as a professional backgammon player, in 1996 he
founded the software company that pioneered the application of
computational physics to financial derivatives. A lecturer at forums
including the University of Chicago and the Office of the Comptroller
of the Currency, Goodkin holds a JD from Northwestern University and
an MBA from Columbia University. The author of Paper Gold, a
bestselling novel of financial intrigue, he lives in Chicago.
