Golden
Networking hosts the World's Most Influential High-Frequency Trading
Conference Series, High Frequency Trading Leaders Forum 2013 London
"Strategic and Tactical Insights for Investors, Speed Traders,
Brokers and Exchanges", March 21
(www.High-Frequency-Trading-Conference.com).
New
York City, NY, USA (March 11, 2013) -- Mr. Edgar Perez, author of
The
Speed Traders and the forthcoming Knightmare on
Wall Street and keynote speaker at Golden Networking's High-Frequency
Trading Leaders Forum 2013 London, "Strategic and Tactical
Insights for Investors, Speed Traders, Brokers and Exchanges",
March 21, gives Facebook, Wikipedia and Google's dominant positions
only ten years, before new entrants steal their crowns and establish
new ways to do business.
In
an interview at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in
Austin, Texas, Yuri Milner, the Russian investor whose early bet on
Mark Zuckerberg's firm made him a billionaire, had said companies
like Facebook, Google and Wikipedia would still exist a century from
now because their services gain momentum the more people use them.
"All three have amazing network effects," said Milner, the
co-founder and chief executive officer of DST. "Chances are that
those are long survivors."
Milner
has long believed that the internet would develop into a "global
brain", which is often described as an intelligent network of
individuals and machines, functioning as a nervous system for the
planet Earth. He also has envisaged that the advent of the Internet
of things and ever increasing use of social media and participatory
systems such as Twitter, Facebook, and Wikipedia would increase our
collective intelligence.
Richard
Foster, the Creative Destruction author referred by Forbes as The
Wizard of Innovation and speaker at China Leaders Forum, was in the
80s in a search for "the excellent company", the
all-seeing, all-knowing, all-wise company that made all the right
moves in advance, and that made more money for its shareholders than
any of its competitors. This was the permanent outperformer stock,
the really good deal, he said. Foster looked at 4,000 companies over
40 years; he concluded there was no such company, and there never had
been such a company! No company had been able to outperform the
market for any substantial length of time. (GE once came as close as
any, but didn't do any better than the overall market index, Foster
reflects). Somehow the market, managed by nobody in particular, was
performing better than all the brains on the planet.
Why
is it that no company can outperform the markets for a long time?
Foster thinks there are several reasons, but the most important is
something called legacy cost. All companies have legacy costs, which
are created the moment a company makes a commitment of time or
resources to a particular course of action. And when a company is
challenged to do something new, to take a new course of action, it
has a hard time abandoning its legacy costs. Companies argue that the
incremental cost of making a slight improvement to an existing
product or service is much better than the full cost of developing
something new from scratch. In doing so, the company attempts to
optimize between the old and the new. This takes the decision making
power away from the customer, and it's a bad direction to go in.
Markets, however, just charge on ahead with the new, because new
entrants don't have any legacy costs to deal with, says Mr. Perez.
Just
last week, Facebook's new News Feed made some welcome cosmetic
changes. But it didn't go very far in addressing the social network's
deeper issues. Fortune's Kevin Kelleher talks about the
vulnerabilities Facebook is facing since it went public. Facebook is
facing more powerful competitors and two important yet sometimes
contradictory mandates, to create a service that will engage its
users, and to make money that will satisfy investors; Facebook's
presentation played down those facts. How intrusive these ads strike
users will depends on the algorithms Facebook designs to insert them
in feeds.
So
while Facebook's new news feed makes some cosmetic fixes that users
are likely to welcome in time, they don't go very far in addressing
rising competition from newer social networks and the uneasy
balancing act between users and advertisers. Those are the legacy
costs Foster refers too, which new entrants that will grow into
becoming new leaders never face. Legacy costs never stopped Wikipedia
and Google from dethroning leading institutions called Britannic
Encyclopedia and Yahoo!
For
Mr. Perez, to think that new companies will take a century to remove
Facebook, Wikipedia or Google from their leadership positions is no
more than wishful thinking; these firms have at most 10 years to milk
their cows and make the big decision: change or die. While Milner
appears not to have a vested interest in Wikipedia or Google, he
might as well start cashing in on his already wildly profitable
Facebook bet. Somebody in some garage is already building a better
mousetrap, Mr. Perez concludes.
High-Frequency
Trading Leaders Forum 2013, "Strategic and Tactical Insights for
Investors, Speed Traders, Brokers and Exchanges"
(http://www.HFT-Leaders-Forum.com)
will bring insights for investors and speed traders who need to
protect and refine their competitive advantage in a world dominated
by algorithmic and high-frequency trading. Recognized practitioners,
regulators, experts, and strategists will return to High-Frequency
Trading Leaders Forum 2013 to provide attendees with the information
they are looking for in an open and unbiased environment, highly
conducive to the most efficient and effective networking.
Mr.
Perez is widely regarded as the preeminent global expert in the
specialized area of high-frequency trading. He is author of 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:
Pandangan Orang dalam tentang Fenomena Baru Frekuensi Tinggi yang
Mentransformasi Dunia Investasi, published in Bahasa Indonesia by
Kompas Gramedia (2012).
Mr.
Perez is course director of The Speed Traders Workshop 2012, How High
Frequency Traders Leverage Profitable Strategies to Find Alpha in
Equities, Options, Futures and FX (Hong Kong, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Kuala
Lumpur, Warsaw, Kiev, New York, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai) and was
Adjunct Professor at the Polytechnic Institute of New York
University, where he taught Algorithmic Trading and High-Frequency
Finance. He contributes to The New York Times and China’s
International Finance News and Sina Finance.
Mr.
Perez has been interviewed on CNBC Cash Flow, CNBC Squawk Box, BNN
Business Day, CCTV China, Bankier.pl, TheStreet.com, Leaderonomics,
GPW Media, Channel NewsAsia Business Tonight and Cents &
Sensibilities. In addition, Mr. Perez has been featured on Sohu,
News.Sina.com, Yicai, eastmoney, Caijing, ETF88.com, 360doc, AH
Radio, CNFOL.com, CITICS Futures, Tongxin Securities, ZhiCheng.com,
CBNweek.com, Caixin, Futures Daily, Xinhua, CBN Newswire, Chinese
Financial News, ifeng.com, International Finance News, hexun.com,
Finance.QQ.com, Finance.Sina.com, The Korea Times, The Korea Herald,
The Star, The Malaysian Insider, BMF 89.9, iMoney Hong Kong, CNBC,
Bloomberg Hedge Fund Brief, The Wall Street Journal, The New York
Times, Dallas Morning News, Valor Econômico, FIXGlobal Trading,
TODAY Online, Oriental Daily News and Business Times.
Mr.
Perez has been engaged to present to the Quant Investment & HFT
Summit APAC 2012 (Shanghai), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
(Washington DC), CFA Singapore, Hong Kong Securities Institute,
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University,
University of International Business and Economics (Beijing), Hult
International Business School (Shanghai) and Pace University (New
York), among other public and private institutions. In addition, Mr.
Perez has spoken at a number of global conferences, including CME
Group's Global Financial Leadership Conference 2012 (Naples Beach,
FL), Harvard Business School’s Venture Capital & Private Equity
Conference (Boston), High-Frequency Trading Leaders Forum (New York,
Chicago), MIT Sloan Investment Management Conference (Cambridge),
Institutional Investor’s Global Growth Markets Forum (London),
Technical Analysis Society (Singapore), TradeTech Asia (Singapore),
FIXGlobal Face2Face (Seoul) and Private Equity Convention Russia, CIS
& Eurasia (London).
Mr.
Perez was a vice president at Citigroup, a senior consultant at IBM,
and a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Co. in New York City. Mr.
Perez has an undergraduate degree from Universidad Nacional de
IngenierÃa, 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 and
is an accomplished salsa and hustle dancer.
Media
Contact:
Julia
Petrova
Media
Relations Coordinator
Golden
Networking
+1-414-FORUMS0
