High-Frequency Trading: A Practical Guide to Algorithmic Strategies and Trading Systems: 604 (Wiley Trading)

This book is an excellent resource for a field with limited information. High frequency trading lacks a large, formal body of work, and Aldridge contributes quite nicely to the small corpus. It's a good read for anyone who is an academic, a practitioner, or even someone just interested in the topic. As some of the other reviewers have mentioned, this book does tend to provide a "top down" view of high-frequency topics, though I think that works in the book's favor. It covers a handful of popular strategies and how to deal with live data (something I knew absolutely nothing about!) as well as understandable explanations of some sophisticated market microstructure concepts. It's an insightful read, and provides a good basis from which to expand either your research if you are an academic, or where to put your resources if you are a practitioner.

The practitioners will probably find this book lacking depth but it provides a good overview of high frequency strategies/trading. I would recommend this book for people willing to learn about HFT but have no real experience in the field.

I am disappointed with this book since I expected fewer topics but more in depth coverage regarding the subject. Instead, the book just scratches on the surface on many different areas, like computer and network hardware/architecture, portfolio performance measurement, an overview of regulations in different regions and some scenarios where you could apply HFT techniques. They are presented more for executives and you would never be able to implement a HFT system based solely on the information presented in this book. Furthermore, I believe, it is not necessary to describe certain (network) protocols, as this sort of information is publicly available anyway and thus does not add any value to the book. The last third of the book becomes more interesting as it addresses actual HFT strategies, the risks involved with HFT and some public misconceptions regarding HFT. On a second thought though, you probably cannot really expect in depth information since nobody in this industry would want to share such potentially profitable knowledge. People who have yet to learn everything how markets or exchanges work might profit most from this book. I still gave it three stars because the book is definitely useful for the right audience.

This book gives the reader a broad introduction to the controversial and highly-competitive world of high-frequency trading. It is written in language clear enough for non-technical readers to benefit while dipping sufficiently deep into information technology and trading mathematics to satisfy those seeking more detail on the methods and mechanics involved in HFT. On the other hand, based on comments by other reviewers, it does not appear to satisfy the demands of the top technologists in the field for a magnum opus on the transmutation of C# code into gold. The book is well organized and illustrated with numerous graphs, tables and formulas that facilitate comprehension of the subject matter. Speculators familiar with algorithmic trading may see direct application to their current strategies as implemented on available commercial trading platforms. Professional money managers get a glimpse behind the smokescreen that that shrouds HFT enabling development of risk-mitigation strategies suited to the evolving world of high-frequency trading. Regulatory personnel can familiarize with the terminology, technologies and strategies to ask better informed questions leading the way to effective policies that limit market manipulation while minimizing harmful unintended consequences. As a private speculator with experience programming and operating algorithmic trading systems on somewhat longer timeframes than microseconds, I find Irene Aldridge's "High-Frequency Trading: A Practical Guide to Algorithmic Strategies and Trading Systems" an informative and useful reference book on the subject. Whether or not the shortcomings noted by other reviewers are technically correct they do not detract from the overall value of the material towards a better understanding of the field of high-frequency trading. I rate this book five stars on the basis that it should be on every trader's bookshelf.

An excellent book and the writer is a very knowledgeable and experienced

This book describes in a deep mode the High Frequency Trading Systems. Includes many references to others sources where you can find more specific information.

Imagine buying a $80 book (compare to US Federal min wage of $7.25/hour) about HFT and getting "insights" like "Return = (Price_today-Price_yesterday)/Price_yesterday" in return. I have read this book till the end hoping that it will get better. But no. Maximum superficial with little value. It's like another amazon user said "it's looks like an MBA thesis". That's definitely right.

I am a computer engineer and have used this book to improve my trading software. The sections on minimizing market impact and exchange microstructure are invaluable when implementing large scale trading operations. Aldridge does a great job extracting ideas from advanced research papers and making them more digestible. This book is essential for any quant, even if it's just for quick-references. Many of the concepts in this book can also be applied to various asset classes (e.g. commodities, stocks, crypto, etc).