Quantitative trading is something I know almost nothing about, but is a topic that I find interesting. Mixing computers, math and some luck to automate trading strategies just sounds fun.

When a friend recommended Quantitative Trading by Ernie Chan, I quickly added to my reading list. What surprised me, was that I finished the book within 24 hours!

There are a few things to like about this book. Ernie’s writing style is very no-nonsense. Every chapter has a logical flow to it, and he is crystal clear about the material he is introducing.

The other part I really like is the practical examples. Theory is introduced only as a way of getting to a measurable outcome. Examples are provided in both Excel and Matlab, and could easily be extended to other automation approaches.

Ernie also covers a the wider business aspects of getting setup as an independent quant, such as the trade-offs between retail and proprietary accounts, risk management, finding, tuning and backtesting trading strategies.

At each point, references are made to further material on each topic, such as books, research papers, online articles and implementations. I certainly felt that I had enough knowledge to go about setting up a simple quantitative trading business.

Even though I do not intend to actually set up as a trader, I found it very informative to understand the industry better. It is something I may come back to in a few years.

Joseph Pine’s talk at TED really has me thinking.

This is a table outlining the difference between the types of economic output, using the example of coffee.

The drive to software-as-a-service makes the software industry jump to service. It takes Apple to move it to an experience. Disney is another example of experience based economics.

I like this framework for thinking about what business I am working in. The trick will be to figure out how move up the ladder to render an authentic experience.

His book is now on my to-read list.

Tom Kelly, of the design and development firm IDEO, gives a brilliant speech at Stanford’s ETL program.

He breaks innovation down into five habits:

• Think like a traveller; be child like with a sense of wonder & exploration.
• Treat life as an experiment; be willing to fail provided learning is attached.
• Nurture an attitude of wisdom.
• Use your whole brain (and your tortoise mind).
• Follow your passions.

The ETL series is available as a podcast on iTunes and continues to be a valuable resource.

Social media is the latest buzz phrase to describe the trend in normal people creating content. Something previously the realm of professional journalists.

In a recent article, Nina Simon investigates how much time is involved per week for different types of participation:

I’m considered fairly involved as I participate in a number of services, including this blog, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and monitor a forum here or there. Some of my friends are participating with Twitter alone, as Twitter dropped the barrier of entry to virtually nil.

This raised a question of how journalists are allocated time for social media. The trend in traditional media is to attempt to integrate social media into the news process. This includes using user generated content in the print product and on the web. But it also involves journalists becoming members of the community.

The obvious implication is that more time is required. However, with newsrooms shrinking and with print and online operations attempting to converge, available time is reduced.

Until time is allocated to social media, the voice of the traditional media will continue to broadcast rather than participate in the conversation.

Business and technology news is awash with the latest rounds of M&A.

Amidst the noise, Fred Wilson adds some perspective:

The Internet is decomposing into a vast array of micro-services that we, the end user, stitches together to make our own unique web experience.

And yet, these large behemoths are trying to do their normal consolidation play on the Internet. First of all, it’s not going to work. They are destroying value with all of their M&A efforts and the bigger they get, the more value they will destroy, for them and their shareholders.

And:

Here’s the problem. The company/web service creation process needs some kind of end game. The entrepreneurs who spend years and risking a ton need a way to get paid for that effort.

… if you can’t take a company public, how do you get out? M&A has been the primary answer in the web/tech sector for the past eight years. And it’s been a great period to sell companies.

But if you look deeper, I wonder. Delicious grew nicely for a while under Yahoo!’s ownership but recently the user base has fallen off pretty dramatically. I double checked this chart in compete and alexa and they all show the dropoff.

But who am I to complain? We got paid right? So sit down and shut up.

Except I am also a user of these services. I see what happens when a company gets purchased. The service languishes. The team leaves. It stops getting better. And often gets worse.

Fred sees this from both sides, as a VC looking for liquidity and as a consumer of web services looking for quality.

The problem with consolidation is in how large companies typically innovate. To get a new idea through requires either skunkworks, acquisition or sixteen layers of approval to risk people’s time. It becomes a problem of permission.

On the flip side, for a start-up you have two options: innovate or die.

Large companies are trying. Google’s 1 day a week program gives explicit permission for people to tinker. Microsoft invests big dollars in R&D and the start-up community. Unfortunately, it isn’t enough.

Fred is quite right. There needs to be a better path to liquidity. Or stated differently, start-ups need a way to become companies, not food for dinosaurs.