Sheelah Kolhatkar

Sheelah Kolhatkar's engrossing account of the pursuit of cheating stock traders fed into my growing skepticism of the fair operation of public markets. I stopped investing in the stock markets shortly after the 2000 tech bubble burst and have no interest in returning. So-called "investment management" today signifies no more and certainly no less than gambling. Take away the suits. Take away the glitzy advertizing. Take away the government programs for "investing in your future," and what you're left with is a system that rewards greed and high stakes gambling. Part of Kolhatkar's thesis is that you often have to cheat to win big, although not all of the big winners are cheaters. There is certainly a prima facia case to be made that Steve Cohen expected his traders to cheat to help him win big. Why am I not surprised? Flip over to other accounts of how computer trading helps a few traders make millions of transactions and beat others to the trading floor in micro-seconds. More cheating. Less transparency in the markets. What continues to sadden me are the scores of graduates of elite universities taking their potential to Wall Street and, in Canada, to Bay Street to work out the fantasies of greed and leave more serious problems to the second tier of risk takers.… (more)