The New Capital Market Revolution: The Winners, the Losers and the Future of Finance

In this strident update of the author's 1999 manifesto, the revolution is straightforward: thanks to the internet and new computer systems, financial trading by the""open outcry"" system (traders in a room shouting prices at each other, as at the New York Stock Exchange) will soon be replaced by electronic trading systems, which are cheaper, faster and less tempting to terrorists. This will have complex effects on financial markets. Among other things, the author argues, financial clearing-houses and hedge funds will flourish, governments will find it harder to regulate financial markets and many traders, stock brokers and other middlemen will be out of work if they don't find new roles to play. Young's plausible (if not always earth-shaking) prognostications come wrapped in an incendiary jumble of Jacobin and Leninist verbiage about the coming""post-feudal marketplace"" that will liberate investors from the tyranny of the financial exchanges, sweep away""reactionaries"" and""counter-revolutionaries"" and""bring masses onto the street."" But such rabble-rousing rhetoric does not automatically make for an interesting read. Young, a trader and CNBC Europe financial pundit, often writes in an acronym-heavy jargon that only financial-industry mavens will follow easily, especially in his lengthy accounts of the rivalries, mergers, automation schemes and internal management disputes among financial exchanges. Nervous traders may agree that these gray boardroom wranglings constitute a latter-day""storming of the Bastille"" and appreciate Young's tips on escaping the guillotine, but ordinary readers may find the book less thrilling.