| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : DECEMBER 27, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| BOOKS
Market Rebels THE DAY TRADERS The Untold Story of the Extreme Investors and How They Changed Wall Street Forever By Gregory J. Millman Times Business 253pp $25 Publishers have cranked out dozens of books this year that promise to pass along the secrets of successful day trading to neophytes. Usually written by self-promoting veteran traders intent on advertising their brokerages or training programs, many are thin, disorganized, and barely literate. The Day Traders by Gregory J. Millman is a welcome departure from this trend. It puts the phenomenon of day trading--where thousands have abandoned jobs in favor of lives spent trading in and out of stocks all day by computer--in a broader context. Rather than merely passing along arcane strategies, The Day Traders gives the history of day trading--yes, there were such traders in the 1920s--and locates the current fad within the context of the rest of the investing world. Millman, whose previous book, The Vandal's Crown, focused on central banks, here describes the intersection of the day traders' world with Wall Street and explains why the two factions have such an adversarial relationship. He makes it clear why day traders consider themselves renegades and are a thorn in Wall Street's side. But perhaps his greatest feat comes in providing an interesting and understandable description of the development of modern electronic trading. If you've read about groundbreaking trading companies such as Archipelago but still can't figure out quite what they do and how their services fit in with major stock exchanges, you'll find The Day Traders illuminating. Perhaps best of all, it's populated with colorful characters. There's Jesse Livermore, who made and lost fortunes trading in the 1920s and '30s. Also included is Harvey Houtkin, CEO of All-Tech Direct, who launched the modern day-trading boom. And Dr. Frederic Wolverton, a therapist who considers day trading an addictive condition. His take on the day-trading career: ''a thin life that lacks values, people, intimacy, and a sense of the world having in it things far more important and deeper than the job itself.'' Millman's writing is uneven and sometimes awkward, as when he describes how instructors of a training program ''utter aphoristic, oracular apothegms to the rhythm of the jiggering prices, in an incantatory, quasi liturgy of initiation.'' And a mix of approaches makes the account a tad disjointed. Some parts are history, others journalistic narrative or pop psychology. There's even a how-to guide. The author clearly is not a day-trading booster. He does describe the occasional excitement and the remote possibility of great riches. But he makes it clear that day trading is getting harder to do as markets get more efficient, more competitors enter the fray, and Wall Street adjusts to the technology. Ultimately, The Day Traders will probably discourage more people from a life of day trading than it will entice. By AMEY STONE _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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