Edgar Perez, Columbia Business School MBA and former McKinsey and IBM consultant, is a global electronic trading and cybersecurity expert, author of The Speed Traders, Knightmare on Wall Street, and the course director of The Speed Traders Workshop 2015 Kuala Lumpur, “How Banks, Hedge and Mutual Funds and Brokers Battle Markets ‘RIGGED’ by Wall Street’s ‘Flash Boys’, High-frequency Trading, Exchanges and Dark Pools”.

New York City, NY, USA (June 3, 2015) — According to the Financial Times, Bursa Malaysia and the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) have both been upgrading their trading systems in recent months to accommodate electronic traders and make it easier for foreigners to trade their markets, including high-frequency traders. Bursa Malaysia has reported in the past growth in the daily average number of contracts traded, in part due to what it said was an “outreach” to high-frequency traders. “We will continue our efforts in offering more tradable alternatives and improving market structure and framework. All these will support our initiatives in expanding our regional presence and in taking us a step closer to being Asean’s multinational marketplace,” said a spokesperson for Bursa Malaysia.

Cybersecurity and electronic trading expert Edgar Perez, author of The Speed Traders (http://www.thespeedtraders.com) and Knightmare on Wall Street (http://www.knightmareonwallstreet.com) will open the door to the secretive world of computerized low-latency trading, the most controversial form of investing today; in the name of protecting the algorithms they have spent so much time perfecting, speed traders almost never talk to the press and try to disclose as little as possible about how they operate. The Speed Traders Workshop 2015 Kuala Lumpur, “How Banks, Hedge and Mutual Funds and Brokers Battle Markets ‘RIGGED’ by Wall Street’s ‘Flash Boys’, High-frequency Trading, Exchanges and Dark Pools”, is the first and most comprehensive initiation to the world of high-frequency trading with The Speed Traders Workshop 2015 Kuala Lumpur (http://www.thespeedtradersworkshop.com) this June 5 will cover the latest research currently available and reveals how high-frequency trading players are operating in global markets and driving the development of electronic trading at breakneck speeds from the U.S. and Europe to Japan, India, and Brazil. The “flash crash”, the suspended BATS IPO, the botched Facebook IPO, Knight Capital’s trading malfunction and NASDAQ’s Flash Freeze are just a few of the milestones in the history of high-frequency trading that will be dissected with participants.

ABOUT KNIGHTMARE ON WALL STREET
Knightmare on Wall Street, The Rise and Fall of Knight Capital and the Biggest Risk for Financial Markets is a thrilling minute-by-minute account of the terrifying hours following Knight Capital’s August 1, 2012 trading debacle, with news-breaking research regarding the firm’s 17 years of tumultuous existence as an independent company. Knightmare on Wall Street is the definitive behind-the-scenes story of Knight Capital.

The firm, founded by Kenneth Pasternak and Walter Raquet in 1995, had seen its fortunes change as U.S. regulators made a series of changes in the structure of financial markets and computers were progressively expanding their share of trading. The Flash Crash, the infamous 1,000 point drop of the DJIA on May 6, 2010 (the largest one-day point decline in history), illustrated how market structure problems could almost instantaneously cascade from one market participant to the rest.

Thomas Joyce, CEO of Knight Capital since 2002 and an unapologetic advocate of electronic trading, had been scornful of those companies that struggled to keep up with ever-changing stock markets. So it was certainly shocking that at 9:30 A.M. on August 1, 2012, right after the markets opened for the day, Knight Capital began issuing an unprecedented number of erroneous orders into the market, due to an error in installing new software. No rogue trader or regulatory change; operational risk was passing the bill to Knight Capital and becoming the biggest risk in the financial markets.

Knight Capital announced later a staggering loss of $440 million. What followed after this shocking announcement were several rounds of desperate conversations with a number of vulture players who had smelled opportunity and were readying themselves to pick up bargain-priced pieces. On August 6, 2012, Joyce confirmed that Knight Capital had struck a deal with Jefferies, TD Ameritrade, Blackstone, GETCO, Stephens, and Stifel Financial, staving off collapse days after the trading mishap.

While Knight Capital was back in the game, its limping recovery quickly prompted hungry competitors to bid for the entire company. On December 19, 2012, the board decided to accept an acquisition proposal from GETCO rather than Virtu Financial. For GETCO, acquiring Knight Capital represented a gigantic fast forward step. For Knight Capital, it was the end of its wild ride as an independent entity.

Knightmare on Wall Street provides a fascinating account of what it took to elevate the firm to the cusp of the retail investing revolution of the late 1990s, to struggle through booms and busts, and to bring the firm down, to end up ultimately being ignominiously bought up by a competitor.

ABOUT THE SPEED TRADERS
High-frequency traders have been called many things-from masters of the universe and market pioneers to exploiters, computer geeks, and even predators. Everyone in the business of investing has an opinion of speed traders, but how many really understand how they operate? The shadow people of the investing world, today’s high-frequency traders have decidedly kept a low profile-until now. In this new title, The Speed Traders, Edgar Perez opens the door to the secretive world of high-frequency trading (HFT). Inside, prominent figures of HFT drop their guard and speak with unprecedented candidness about their trade.

Edgar begins with an overview of computerized trading, which formally began on February 8, 1971, when NASDAQ launched the world’s first electronic market with 2,500 over-the-counter stocks and which has evolved into the present-day practice of making multiple trades in a matter of microseconds. He then picks the brains of today’s top players. Manoj Narang (Tradeworx), John Netto (M3 Capital), and Aaron Lebovitz (Infinium Capital Management) are just a few of the luminaries who decided to break their silence and speak openly to Edgar. Virtually all of the expertise available from the world of speed trading is packed into these pages.

The Speed Traders, published by McGraw-Hill Inc., is the most comprehensive, revealing work available on the most important development in trading in generations. High-frequency trading will no doubt play an ever larger role as computer technology advances and the global exchanges embrace fast electronic access. The Speed Traders explains everything there is to know about how today’s high-frequency traders make millions-one cent at a time.

ABOUT ELECTRONIC TRADING AND CYBERSECURITY EXPERT EDGAR PEREZ
Mr. Perez is the author of Knightmare on Wall Street, The Rise and Fall of Knight Capital and the Biggest Risk for Financial Markets (2013), and The Speed Traders, An Insider’s Look at the New High-Frequency Trading Phenomenon That is Transforming the Investing World, published in English by McGraw-Hill Inc. (2011), Published in Mandarin by China Financial Publishing House (2012), and Investasi Super Kilat, published in Bahasa Indonesia by Kompas Gramedia (2012).

Mr. Perez was a vice president at Citigroup, a senior consultant at IBM, and a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Co. in New York City. Previously, he managed Operations and Technology for Peruval Finance. Mr. Perez has an undergraduate degree in Systems Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, Lima, Peru (1994), a Master of Administration from Universidad ESAN, Lima, Peru (1997) and a Master of Business Administration from Columbia Business School, New York, with a dual major in Finance and Management (2002). He belongs to the Beta Gamma Sigma honor society. Mr. Perez resides in the New York City area with his wife Olga, son Edgar Felipe and daughter Svetlana Sofia.

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