Hired Guns
First Published in Automated Trader Magazine Issue 12 Q1 2009
Hedging your talent risk could mean employing games enthusiasts with recent weapons training, says Helen Sanders
The technology world would seem to have come a long way since the first computer, as we would understand the term, was first designed. In 1943, Howard Aiken and IBM created the first universal calculator to calculate the data he needed to develop his theory of space-charge conduction in vacuum tubes. Harvard Mark I, as it was known, was 16m long and 2.4m high. It had over 765,000 parts, 3,300 relays, 175,000 connections and over 500 miles (800 km) of wire. At the time, the machine was unbelievably fast: it could do 3 calculations per second.
Your first reaction to this may be slightly amusement and possible smugness. After all, look where we are now, surely this is ancient history.
But looking at today’s trading technology, the challenges are actually very similar. How do we find ways of processing more data, more quickly? The volume of data continues to proliferate, servers are getting bigger, but not by enough to satisfy the inexhaustible craving for crunching all these figures. Every trader creates his or her competitive advantage by being microseconds faster than the competition. It is not only the technology which is struggling to keep up. Perhaps more significantly, it is a scarcity of skills with which to leverage the technology which could mean that traders will lose competitive advantage.
Barry Thompson, CEO and Founder of Terve...
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