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May 16, 2012

Comment: Man and machine

Ian Williams announces the postponement of the NYSINYD IPO

Investors will know we take pride in aggressively seeking aleph-(C), the large gains from activities with no discernible redeeming socio-economic benefits whatsoever. In that context, we envisaged this year being able to trade stocks even before they were offered, as a result of the faster-than-light effect.
 
We regret to inform you, however, that reports of neutrinos going faster than light through the earth – on which we based our plans – were premature.

The Italian scientists who first reported the effect got the results wrong due to faulty wiring, inaccurate clocks and other mundane sublunary details. Note: we did warn you that Italian statistical reporting is not always accurate, although we had not thought the fuzzy numbers would apply to physical as well as economic fundamentals.

The sad consequence is that we might not be able to action that particular part of our business plan. But neutrinos going straight through the earth — even at mere light speeds — still offer more advantageously rapid trading than fiber optic cables wending their way around the globe’s surface, so we shall continue to pursue that project between Chicago, New York and London, and very possibly through the Earth’s core to the Asian exchanges for those seeking aleph in the Pacific markets.

Whatever the other terminal, the increasing dependence on high-speed trading will allow us to charge premium rates for such services. In our ongoing project to extract aleph from trading, however, we are considering a whole new breakthrough, taking IR to the next level — indeed, several quantum levels up.

As someone might have said, half my IR budget is wasted, but I don’t know which half. Indeed, aren’t all IR efforts wasted? Previous IR techniques have been human-centered, which means they are at best slow, fallible and often unquantifiable. But which investors are companies relating to?

Already IROs face the difficulty of stroking an index or relating to an exchange-traded fund, or having a one-on-one with the FTSE or MSCI. Worse, some 60 percent of trading activity is now performed by high-speed algorithms without human intervention. How do you make nice to a computer program?

So our IR firm has been on the case. Our patented IR hardware and software should reach out directly to the trading computers, reducing human error in data transmission, the risk of insider trading charges and jet-lag, while allowing executives to catch up with their golf and other essential battery-recharging activities.

Our crack team of Russian programmers, in conjunction with our Lagos research operation, has been working on how to add to the algorithms. Full details are still in development, but our plans include persuading other firms’ trading algorithms to keep nudging prices upward until the executive options are cashed in. It was also proposed to interpolate some lines of code that maintain a perpetual (and positive) differential over peer stocks.

In short, we intend to harmonize cosmology with the financial universe: occasional Big Bangs are the price you pay for continued expansion. With aleph, we will be tapping the quantum finance of the global economy!

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