Traders spend their time reading and relaying others’ market presence signals

Evidence

On a second level, however, traders want to learn about others’ concrete involvements in the market, which change continually and are signaled on screen. What are these signals? They are the deal requests that counterparties make, the messages that others send, and the price movements that they trigger. Through these signals, absent market participants have what Goodwin (1995, p. 260) once called a mediated presence on screen. A significant part of traders’ observational activity goes toward the identification and reading of the signals of mediated presence with a view to market players’ possible moves and intentions. Another significant part goes toward the conveyance of what they observe to other market players with whom they maintain relationships. In this sense, traders transmit and amplify the signals of reciprocity, thereby contributing to their spread. — Karin Knorr Cetina & Urs Bruegger, Global Microstructures, 76

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Goodwin’s ‘mediated presence’ as the conceptual handle for how absent counterparties appear and act on screen.
• XREF: connects to: Screen-mediated markets relax the need to directly observe traders watching — Karin Knorr Cetina & Urs Bruegger, Global Microstructures: The Virtual…, 75; Screen signals give absent traders a mediated presence that colleagues observe, read, and retransmit

Broader Connections

• Screen signals give absent traders a mediated presence that colleagues observe, read, and retransmit #expands (0.95)
• Screen-mediated markets relax the need to directly observe traders watching #expands (0.85) — Karin Knorr Cetina & Urs Bruegger, Global Microstructures, 75