Or science at least.
Walter Jon Williams brings global finance (automatic online trading programs that turn $20,000 into $20 million in two months, and later single-handedly crash currencies of Indonesia, Chile, China, and US and incite riots on the streets) into his latest books This Is Not a Game, and boy, was that a mistake.
This isn't some fantastical future technology where you can suspect disbelief and say "oh yeah, maybe in 50 years we will invest an anti-gravity generator," this is real life stuff, and it just doesn't work the way he describes.
He's such a good writer, too. This is just a shame.
Walter Jon Williams brings global finance (automatic online trading programs that turn $20,000 into $20 million in two months, and later single-handedly crash currencies of Indonesia, Chile, China, and US and incite riots on the streets) into his latest books This Is Not a Game, and boy, was that a mistake.
This isn't some fantastical future technology where you can suspect disbelief and say "oh yeah, maybe in 50 years we will invest an anti-gravity generator," this is real life stuff, and it just doesn't work the way he describes.
He's such a good writer, too. This is just a shame.
At least, the one course I took in it was a physics course.
How likely are you to get 100% return on $20,000 in 4 days? And to double your money then every four days for the next 2 months?
It's near impossible, of course. The first few might be do-able with a heavy helping of luck, but it gets exponentially more difficult with each doubling.
Of course, the other part of this is risk. Extremely high risk in real life, to which returns are standardized, so even the 100% return wouldn't be much, risk-adjusted. Expected returns are probably negative. But I bet that discussion gets omitted
This message last edited by BlackAdder on 29/10/2010 at 05:36:30 PM
Science fiction writers need to stick with physics.
- 29/10/2010 04:24:16 AM
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If it helps, they mostly get the physics wrong too. 
*NM*
- 29/10/2010 07:08:23 AM
337 Views
*NM*
- 29/10/2010 07:08:23 AM
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Well technically, quant trading is a branch of physics. 
- 29/10/2010 07:52:26 AM
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- 29/10/2010 07:52:26 AM
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tell me this.
- 29/10/2010 02:06:03 PM
744 Views
I will tell you
- 29/10/2010 05:35:43 PM
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