Interbank currency traders form a global social system distinct from local exchange brokerages

Evidence

It is important to realize that we are indeed confronted with global social systems here. Traders are the major operators in international currency markets, and they are interconnected by high-technology communication in real time, passing their “books,” when accounts are not closed in the evening, from time zone to time zone, following the sun. This situation has to be distinguished from that of dispersed brokerage communities in major exchanges, in which members do not exhibit high-frequency dynamic interaction with one another across countries and exchanges. Traders in interbank currency dealing do not broker deals but trade for their banks’ accounts via direct dealer-to-dealer contact or via electronic brokerage systems disengaged from local settings. — Karin Knorr Cetina & Urs Bruegger, Global Microstructures, 13

Categorization

• XREF: Distinguishing screen-based proprietary trading from floor brokerages echoes the floor-trading ethnographies on my reading list (e.g. Baker 1984, Abolafia 1996) and frames the post/self-shaped field site the way Knorr Cetina does elsewhere. — connects to: Markets operate as processual social systems shaped by trader practice, knowledge, and globality — Karin Knorr Cetina & Urs Bruegger, Global Microstructures: The Virtual…, 35; Global markets are assembled through microsocial patterns of relatedness and coordination — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 1086; Trader sociality persists inside electronic markets and was ethnographically documented (+8 more)

Related

• Fieldwork on trading floors reveals the microstructural and knowledge-embedded basis of global trading systems. (similarity 0.90)
• Interbank currency trading differs fundamentally from exchange brokerage by its round-the-clock continuity. (similarity 0.87)
• Global markets are assembled through microsocial patterns of relatedness and coordination (similarity 0.87)
• Geographically dispersed but mutually oriented actors form global microstructures that bind markets together. (similarity 0.87)
• Markets operate as processual social systems shaped by trader practice, knowledge, and globality (similarity 0.87)
• Global market interaction produces intersubjectivity beyond face-to-face encounters (similarity 0.86)
• Karin Knorr Cetina & Urs Bruegger — Global Microstructures The Virtual Societies of Financial Markets (similarity 0.82)
• Conversation itself is the instrument of global interbank exchange. (similarity 0.81)
• Trader identity depends on continuous connection to the market domain (similarity 0.80)
• Screen-based trading recreated rather than abolished trader sociality and mutual anticipation. (similarity 0.80)
• Global impersonal markets rest on personal trust and telephone networks (similarity 0.80)
• In disembedded global markets information gifts build relationships without prior face-to-face contact (similarity 0.79)
• Geographically dispersed markets achieve social integration through time, not space (similarity 0.79)
• Shared temporal structuring of a common object distinguishes global markets from ordinary electronic groups (similarity 0.79)
• Global social fields can form from micro interactions without complex organization. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Markets operate as processual social systems shaped by trader practice, knowledge, and globality #corroborates (0.90) — Karin Knorr Cetina & Urs Bruegger, Global Microstructures, 35
• Global markets are assembled through microsocial patterns of relatedness and coordination #corroborates (0.85) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 1086
• Fieldwork on trading floors reveals the microstructural and knowledge-embedded basis of global trading systems. #corroborates (0.85) — Karin Knorr Cetina & Urs Bruegger, Global Microstructures, 46
• Trader sociality persists inside electronic markets and was ethnographically documented #expands (0.82)
• Global market interaction produces intersubjectivity beyond face-to-face encounters #corroborates (0.80) — Karin Knorr Cetina & Urs Bruegger, Global Microstructures, 98
• Global impersonal markets rest on personal trust and telephone networks #expands (0.75)
• Trader identity depends on continuous connection to the market domain #expands (0.72) — Karin Knorr Cetina & Urs Bruegger, Global Microstructures, 71