Comment by Nimitz14 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nimitz14 | Hacker News Reader

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https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/michael-lewis-...

Quote:

> I think this is the crux of this story: according to Michael Lewis and Katsuyama, we’re supposed to trust people like Einhorn who have been convicted of insider trading, people who are suspected of insider trading (buy side is by definition rife with this; particularly firms that do merger arb and special events), J.P. Morgan, Goldman and Morgan Stanley: we’re supposed to trust these guys more than we’re supposed to trust a bunch of tiny little market making firms who had been inconveniencing them by taking away some of their flow. Lewis tries to make this seem like a battle between the underdog “good guys” and the evil establishment. To believe this, you’d have to believe that Goldman Sachs and people like Einhorn are underdogs, rather than the actual establishment. To believe this, you’d have to believe the tiny industry of HFT traders actually rules the world and buys off congressmen and the SEC more than … J.P. Morgan and Goldman. [...] Yeah, I might believe that. I might believe that if I were a dribbling retard.

Still this is all just Ad-Hominem attack on the characters in Flash Boys and seems a bit over the top "Yeah, I might believe that. I might believe that if I were a dribbling retard."

doesn't really answer why Flash Boys does such a terrible job of explaining HFT

Yes, it does. You didn't read it carefully enough.

The whole premise of the David and Goliath story Lewis wants to tell is that HFT is a device used by the Wall Street establishment to screw over the rest of the market.

But in fact it's more the opposite: HFT firms are upstart prop trading and market making shops that are pissing off giant banks like Goldman and JPMC by making it harder for them to skim profits off block trades for pension and hedge funds.

Also: the use of rhetoric like "dribbling retard" isn't what makes an argument "ad hominem". An ad hominem argument is one whose logic rests on a claim about its opponent and doesn't account for its opponent's argument. The logic behind the quote you're commenting on doesn't do that.

i said that comment is a bit over the top. i was talking about "either Lewis is a credulous idiot who is not competent as a journalist, or Katsuyama is an idiot who was not competent as a trader" it seems Locklin's goal is to say Michael Lewis is an idiot, which is ad-hominem attack. The need to call him an idiot, combined with the "retard" comment is really not needed and doesn't add anything.

i do appreciate your explanation for how the goal of Lewis's book is based on a fallacy

You're missing an important piece of context.

The argument being made here is about Katsuyama's complaint that the prices he'd see in his terminal would suddenly move away from him if he tried to trade large blocks of stock at that price.

What makes Katsuyama sound incompetent is his apparent lack of understanding of the price pressure his own large block trades put on the market. Lewis makes Katsuyama out to sound as if he can reasonably expect that if FCOJ is quoted 29.78-29.80, he can sell 100,000 shares at the quoted price. Of course, not only can he not expect to do that, but the influence that large trade has on the market is the whole reason Katsuyama is paid by RBC to trade for its clients.

Hence: either Lewis doesn't understand his subject well enough to report on it, or Katsuyama doesn't understand the basic function of his job.

In any case: not an ad-hominem, sorry. There's a popular Internet fallacy that says any argument that uses insulting language must be an ad-hominem. Insults aren't usually productive, but they don't automatically produce flawed arguments.

How about him saying "looking a little scaly, bub" for a caption for lewis. Surely what Lewis looks like has no relevance on the argument. Seems Lacklin has it out for Lewis.

I guess calling him an idiot is not ad-hominem in that he's arguing he doesn't understand what he's talking about.

If you're on a mission to spot all the unproductive rhetoric in a substantive criticism of the book, that's fine, but I'm not interested. It takes a couple minutes to think out and write up an explanation of what these criticisms are about, and when you respond to one of those explanations by changing the subject to a snarky caption on a photo, I'm made to feel like I wasted my time.

Sorry, didn't mean to waste your time.

A) I agreed with your last comment

B) was just pointing out that the snarkyness comes across strong in the blog post. So it's possible that frame of mind affects the writing and it affects the reader, argument aside.

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