My book, Automating Finance: Infrastructures, Engineers, and the Making of Electronic Markets, comes out today with Cambridge University Press.

https://www.cambridge.org/core_title/gb/529998

I'd like to take a few tweets to talk about the book and thank all those who contributed to this project. 1/
Automating Finance looks at the momentous transformation of trading in American and British stock markets between c.1960 to the present. Broadly speaking, this corresponds to the shift from face-to-face to electronic trading. 2/
The book is structured by two arguments. The first concerns the need to focus more on infrastructures as a way of understanding how markets work and change over time 3/
This involves, among other things, moving away from dominant 'transactional' theories of markets by placing more attention on the 'market engineers' responsible for creating, maintaining, tweaking and expanding the devices of the marketplace. 4/
Here, the history of @LSEplc's automation is exemplary in that it shows how a small band of techies hired in the late 1960s grew to capture their organization to then transform the marketplace at the time of big bang 5/
Here, the history of @LSEplc's automation is exemplary in that it shows how a small band of techies hired in the late 1960s grew to capture their organization to then transform the marketplace at the time of big bang 5/
Here, the history of @LSEplc's automation is exemplary in that it shows how a small band of techies hired in the late 1960s grew to capture their organization to then transform the marketplace at the time of big bang 5/
In telling the story of the LSE, I really have to thank my amazing interviewees: Peter Bennett, George Hayter, Peter Buck, Ian McLelland, Mick Newman, John Scannell, and Peter Scott among many others. 6/
Importantly, market engineers didn't just change organizations: they also transformed fields. For this, Automating Finance explores what happened when LSE disbanded its tech development between 1988-1992. One consequence: the creation of the first electronic market in London 7/
That is the fascinating story of Tradepoint, a fully electronic exchange created by Peter Bennett, Michael Waller-Bridge, and Steven Wilson and that altogether transformed how stock trading happened in the City of London. 8/
The second argument that I explore in the book is that focusing on infrastructures allows understanding how markets create relations. Combining Weberian and Strathernian metaphors, I argue that market infrastructures matter because of how they connect (and disconnect) things 9/
Indeed, market infrastructures are heavily moralized, like all forms of relations making. This is clear in the patent of the first electronic limit order book, which sought to automate price determination to eliminate human judgment to produce 'fair trades' 10/
FYI: The inventor, Frederick Nymeyer, was a very interesting case: a staunch advocate of neoaustrian economics, supporter of von Mises, and a Calvinist reformer. 11/
But relation-making is perhaps clearer in the case of the creation of the US's National Market System, which I also explore in the book.12/
At the core, discussions about NMS and its infrastructures were discussions about financial community and the types of 'justice' and 'fairness' that should mediate relations within a financialized world. 13/
After examining how the NMS was infrastructured through institutional politics, weak regulation, and the serendipity of infrastructural work (in partic. Chris Keith's work at NYSE), I conclude with some thoughts about finance. 14/
I reflect on stock markets as barometers of broader social transformations. The stock market has been an exemplar of individualized action and economization, but it is also an indicator of how infrastructures matter today by moving action from crowds to queues. 15/
So, the book covers a lot. And it does so only because I've had the honor of interacting with many scholars over the years. Of course, the book would not have been possible without Donald MacKenzie and Alex Preda's early support. 16/
But, beyond the politics of citations, it also benefited greatly from conversations and feedback from @GustavoOnto and the folks at @MuseuNacional, my amazing colleagues at @LSEsociology and @UCSDSociology, the terrific community @FinandSoc @FinSocNet 17/
and the inspiring work of scholars like @provokedeconomy @marionfourcade @zv99 @fdrubio1977 @delaeconomia @royal_t14 and many, many others. Thank you 🙏, for everything. 18/18
And of course, a massive thanks to @BatizLazo who has also followed this project for quite a while and contributed to it in so many ways. 19/19
You can follow @pardoguerra.
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