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The Predictors: How a Band of Maverick Physicists Used Chaos Theory to Trade Their Way to a Fortune on Wall Street

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The Predictors: How a Band of Maverick Physicists Used Chaos Theory to Trade Their Way to a Fortune on Wall Street (Hardcover)

by Thomas A. Bass (Author)

3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Henry Holt & Company Inc (31 Dec 1998)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0805057560
ISBN-13: 978-0805057560
Product Dimensions: 22.6 x 16 x 3.3 cm

Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,053,942 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Synopsis

Describes how two physicists, experts in the sciences of chaos and complexity, used theoretical physics to decipher the confusion of the global financial market and how they ultimately used the knowledge to amass a fortune.

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	37% buy The Predictors 3.5 out of 5 stars (4)
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Customer Reviews

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Average Customer Review

3.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)

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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Investment Little Leaguers Storm the Big Leagues, 29 Aug 2004

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

This book's appeal lies in its contrasts. Serious students of nonlinear relationships from academia meet unintellectual money men from Wall Street is one such contrast. Operating in humble surroundings in Santa Fe, New Mexico while supplying information to trade commodities in the financial capitals is another. Informal dressers meet people in power suits is another. In such circumstances, we naturally pull for the outsider, and you will be rooting for the Prediction Company to succeed. When it does, you will feel good. The American dream lives!

If you are looking for a book to help you become a more successful investor, though, this one won't take you very far.

"We look for pockets of predictability, shifting regimens where order can be found merging from what are otherwise highly chaotic time series." This observation in the book builds on chaos theory, a subject that those featured in the book, especially Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard, helped develop. For example, when you look at two fluids that are streaming past one another, the edges are turbulent. When you look at those edges in more detail though, you will see many repetitions of the same pattern (fractals). Having worked first with physical patterns like this, the Prediction Company moves into financial markets to look for fractal patterns caused by human psychology.

I graded the book down by two stars not because it is an uninteresting book, or badly written. The story is quite engaging and is smoothly written. I graded the book down because the book fails to capture the full context of the subject matter, and falls far short of its potential as a result. You get occasional references to chaos theory, computer processing issues, and making money with mathematically-based predictions, but these are only hints. The book should have made these connections as more thoroughly developed themes.

My interpretation of what the Prediction Company is doing is finding situations that occur so predictably (and with so few losses when they do not) that such trades create lopsided risk-reward opportunities. Many securities offer just such patterns, and many money managers search for them. Looking for those that reflect nonlinear relations is done much less often. That concept makes a fascinating story, because computer processing power limits what can be done. How did the Prediction Company get around this problem? We get little information. That's too bad!

After you have finished enjoying this story of the underdogs taking some of the top dogs, I suggest you think about where you know a great deal about something. Where can that knowledge be applied in new places and in new ways? Where could you do this and have a ball? You may at least find a new hobby, as a result. Even better, you could found a new industry!

Keep an open mind!

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The people, not the techniques, 29 Aug 2007

By	P. Bell (Brighton, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Predictors: How a Band of Maverick Physicists Used Chaos Theory to Trade Their Way to a Fortune on Wall Street (Paperback)

A readable "fly-on-the-wall" view of how the people went through a history, but it doesn't tell you anything about the techniques they used. There's lots of references to "models" and "genetic algorithms", but no examples or background.

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