Even screen-bound algorithmic traders remain embedded in social ritual

Evidence

Risk spreading has been the markets’ principal insurance mechanism. But modern-day traders on the ground have also continued to rely on age-old forms of sociality and interdependence to perform their routine speculations. I have referred a few times to the image of the twenty-first century’s homo speculans as an algorithm-crunching chaos doomer residing in the dark corners of shadow trading—a creature that on first sight could not seem more distant from Weber’s “charismatic” speculator. It would be a mistake, however, to consider that figure as socially disembedded. … Contemporary traders’ speculative communities provide a space for guesswork (that is, of what others value) but also for the continuous work of an “anonymous sociality” (LiPuma 2017) in financial markets. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 277

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the defining guard against misreading homo speculans as socially disembedded.
• XREF: Connects to my broader reading — Weber’s ‘charismatic’ speculator invocation and the ‘anonymous sociality’ concept echo scholarly treatments of markets as communities. — connects to: Modern speculation still depends on trader sociality and interdependence, not just risk models. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 424; Trader sociality persists inside electronic markets and was ethnographically documented; Screen-based trading preserves mutual anticipation among algorithmic traders — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 427 (+8 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Modern speculation still depends on trader sociality and interdependence, not just risk models. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 424; Trader sociality persists inside electronic markets and was ethnographically documented; Screen-based trading preserves mutual anticipation among algorithmic traders — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 427 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Trader sociality persists inside electronic markets and was ethnographically documented #corroborates (0.97)
• Screen-based trading recreated rather than abolished trader sociality and mutual anticipation. #corroborates (0.95) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 427
• Homo speculans remains socially embedded despite algorithmic trading #corroborates (0.93) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 277