The standard procedure at the firm was for the traders to watch the machines trading out of the corner of their eye while they ran little research projects. (The trading occupied roughly the same place in Sam’s attention that video games later would.) A trader on the international ETF desk, for instance, might start with the following question: When the price of oil moves during US trading hours, what happens to the ETFs filled with stocks of companies in big oil-producing countries whose markets are closed? If oil prices pop higher during lunchtime in New York City, the shares of, say,
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