Milkshakes & Butterflies, the memoirs of a trader

This book is partly a personal memoir of Jerry's experience as a mathematician of exceptional gifts who joined the Amsterdam Euronext option exchange as a raw graduate recruit and traded successfully for seven years until the exchange vanished in 2002 and was replaced by an electronic trading platform.

Readers may remember the scenes of the physical exchanges with men, and they were almost all men, waving their hands around furiously, and jockeying for position in the pit. It was a scene of high adrenaline and much emotion, mirroring human life only one hundred times more intensely, as Jerry explains.

Indeed, you are left wondering what was lost in the closure of such a den of capitalism. Do the Internet and its electronic platforms do things better?

Light-speed

Jerry concedes that computers can handle options more quickly than the human brain and pays a glowing tribute to the new products that have followed the advent of the electronic platform.

Just as the world of newspapers now finds its readers being drawn away to the Internet, thanks to same-day news, the strange world of the trading floor vanished within a year. Jerry himself traveled the world before setting up his own training company Mercurious. He also trades on electronic platforms himself, and has his well-read column on AME Info, 'Futures & Commodities'.

But the big question of whether the super fast world of electronic option trading, leverage and the hedge funds does more than concentrate wealth into the hands of the wealthy, and is set to blow up in their face falls outside the scope of this book. However, it is worrying to think of the manic world of option trading suddenly morphing into the invisible world of the Internet.

On the trading floor the traders could see what was going on, even if nobody from the outside could appreciate all that waving of hands and miscellaneous gesticulation. Who in the financial world really has a clue about the hedge funds and what they are up to?

Human element

Part of the problem is the elimination of the trading floors and the human element. Jerry found this his biggest issue with the electronic age and enjoys the human interaction with his audience in his training company who will also benefit from the great experience and enthusiasm that this author can project.

But what are all those computers doing now with the cash swirling around the system? Where are the trillions of dollars now represented by the hedge funds? It could all be an accident waiting to happen.

But read Jerry's book for an insight into how the world of option traders used to operate, and gain wisdom from the experience of the past. It may help to understand what goes wrong in the future.