Briefs

HAL 9000-Style Machines, Kubrick's Fantasy, Outwit Traders

By Jason Kelly

May 3 (Bloomberg) -- Way up in a New York skyscraper, inside the headquarters of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Michael Kearns is trying to teach a computer to do something other machines can't: think like a Wall Street trader.

In his cubicle overlooking the trading floor, Kearns, 44, consults with Lehman Brothers traders as Ph.D.s tap away at secret software. The programs they're writing are designed to sift through billions of trades and spot subtle patterns in world markets.

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For decades, investment banks and hedge fund firms have employed quants and their computers to uncover relationships in the markets and exploit them with rapid-fire trades.

Hyperquants

Quants seek to strip human emotions such as fear and greed out of investing. Today, their brand of computer-guided trading has reached levels undreamed of a decade ago. A third of all U.S. stock trades in 2006 were driven by automatic programs, or algorithms, according to Boston-based consulting firm Aite Group LLC. By 2010, that figure will reach 50 percent, according to Aite.

AI proponents say their time is at hand. Vasant Dhar, a former Morgan Stanley quant who teaches at New York University's Stern School of Business in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, is trying to program a computer to predict the ways in which unexpected events, such as the sudden death of an executive, might affect a company's stock price.

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