It used to be that strategies in financial markets functioned as a form of discipline around fear and greed and the market savvy, or acumen, or just plain chutzpah of human traders. Today, trading strategies are much less heuristic. They by and large exist in the realm of ideas. They are quantified and operated by computers in order to consistently profit from some identifiable opportunity in the market.
This is the paradigm shift to which automation in trading has given rise.
Today, financial markets can be thought of as complex systems of algorithmic trading strategies. The (micro-level) automation of strategies has changed the (macro-level) nature of financial markets and the financial industry at nearly every level—(meso-level) organizational behavior and strategic management, technology, risk control, regulation, even ethics.
This requires new thinking about modern financial markets.
The IIT Stuart Center for Strategic Finance is a research organization that is doing just that—thinking in new ways about how modern financial markets work and the importance of trading strategy and automation to their proper functioning. Its faculty and affiliated researchers are asking new questions and developing new theories that are forming a new foundation for the future.
Automation is an interdisciplinary endeavor.
Because the IIT Stuart Center for Strategic Finance is housed within the business school at Chicago’s premier technological university, it is uniquely positioned to engage in the new research that must cross academic boundaries if we are to understand the new realities of modern financial markets.
I invite you to explore the IIT Stuart Center for Strategic Finance and support its initiatives.
Ben Van Vliet, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Finance
Director, Center for Strategic Finance