Machine learning is fundamentally transforming financial markets. Where trading strategies were once crafted by human experts-executed manually or through pre-coded rules-firms now build models that generate the strategies themselves. These are not just tools but trading automatons: semi-independent systems designed to learn from markets and act on their own. Drawing on over a decade of fieldwork in financial markets, Christian Borch offers a rare inside look at how these systems are built, the risks they pose, and how they challenge our understanding of markets and decision-making. As trading automatons grow more complex and opaque-even to their designers-new sociological questions emerge: What happens when machines become the primary agents in markets? And how should we understand economic action when human judgment is no longer at the center? Trading Beyond Understanding is a powerful investigation of machine agency, market transformation, and the shifting boundaries between technological systems and social life.
| ISBN: | 9781503636804 |
| Publication date: | 10th March 2026 |
| Author: | Christian Borch |
| Publisher: | Stanford University Press |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 222 pages |
| Series: | Currencies : New Thinking for Financial Times |
| Genres: |
Social theory Political economy Impact of science and technology on society |
Machine learning is fundamentally transforming financial markets. Where trading strategies were once crafted by human experts-executed manually or through pre-coded rules-firms now build models that generate the strategies themselves. These are not just tools but trading automatons: semi-independent systems designed to learn from markets and act on their own. Drawing on over a decade of fieldwork in financial markets, Christian Borch offers a rare inside look at how these systems are built, the risks they pose, and how they challenge our understanding of markets and decision-making. As trading automatons grow more complex and opaque-even to their designers-new sociological questions emerge: What happens when machines become the primary agents in markets? And how should we understand economic action when human judgment is no longer at the center? Trading Beyond Understanding is a powerful investigation of machine agency, market transformation, and the shifting boundaries between technological systems and social life.
Trading Beyond Understanding features in the following genres: Social theory, Political economy, Impact of science and technology on society
Trading Beyond Understanding is available in Paperback, Hardback
Trading Beyond Understanding was written by Christian Borch and published by Stanford University Press
Trading Beyond Understanding has 222 pages
Yes it is part of Currencies : New Thinking for Financial Times series