James Grippando’s Novella “The Penny Jumper” – Trading Stock at Lightspeed
#highfrequencytrrading $daytrading #stockmarket thepennyjumper #daytrading #pennystock
John J. Hohn – Writer, Reviewer and Commentator
Time is money, but what is the price tag that comes with it. Bestselling author James Grippando sets the amount at about 160 million every trading day on Wall Street. That’s for a single millisecond or .001 seconds. Why so much? Simple. High frequency traders on the world’s stock exchanges go to great lengths to gain a millisecond advantage over their competitors. In an intricate network of computers and trading systems, one millisecond gives a firm the chance to increase profits by jumping up the price on large blocks of stock by one cent per share. Companies losing money to the high-jacking of the data stream want to put an end to the practice. Their quest sets the stage for Grippando’s excellent novella, The Penny Jumper.
It will take an complex algorithm to stop the penny jumpers from hitchhiking onto the trades streaming from every corner of the globe. In fact, it would require a genius, one presumably beyond the reach of Wall Street, nestled obscurely in a university staff somewhere working in a field of pure research. Turns out Ainsley Grace – young, pretty and bright – is engaged in a monumental project at MIT that would harness all the telescopes of the world and convert them into one huge cyclops to penetrate outer space. The distances data must travel from the far flung locations needs to be synchronized before a composite image is possible. Ainsley configures an algorithm that has all the scopes seeing as one. Kudos for the achievement, however, do not come with a bonus that would alleviate Ainsley’s heavy student load debt. She accepts a consulting job with a Wall Street firm who is wrestling with the penny jumper problem.
James Grippando – Auhor
Leaving Boston for New York, Ainsley comes up with the algorithm her employers that will protect them against the penny jumpers. Problem is, before she can collect her six figure fee, her program is stolen, and to top it off, she is the accused of absconding with it herself. She is being framed but proving her innocence is no easy task and there are disarming twists and turns along the way that make her plight at times seem hopeless.
Author Grippando’s tale of Ainsley’s adventure in the wilds of capitalism, where greed is good, is exquisitely symmetrical. Everything he starts, he finishes. No loose ends. The author’s style is lean and efficient, providing just enough detail to orient the reader with each setting. The pace of the mystery is almost as fast as the data streams central to the story without sacrificing insight into the characters or concocting unlikely coincidences to move the plot along. The courtroom scenes are compelling. The dialogue crisp and authentic. Ainsley’s relationship with her attorney and friend, Connor, is straightforward and realistic; in a word, refreshing. Grippando is a master at breaking down the scientific premise of the plot into layman’s terms. In his hands, brevity does not equate to superficiality. The author quotes Carl Sagan, for example, to answer to the age old debate of agnosticism versus atheism. He takes less than a paragraph were others have wasted pages. In a story about really bright, thinking people, the author’s genius shines in a plot that has thoroughly thought through. There are plenty of surprises along the way, right up until the final page.
The Penny Jumper Cover
The Penny Jumper is nearly flawless. Author Grippando is marvelously inventive with every detail to keep the story credible, save one. Bad guy, Vlad Kosov, uses mob muscle to get the price reduced by half on a 50 million dollar property in Hong Kong. Real estate transactions at that stratospheric level, especially in Hong Kong, just don’t seem vulnerable to on-site threats from a thug. It wouldn’t matter so much, except that the man who is intimidated into selling is important to the rest of the plot. Readers may trip but not break stride on this detail because the story line is so compelling and beautifully presented. The Penny Jumper is thoroughly entertaining if a bit unsettling once readers realize the high volume trading network at the heart of our cherished free enterprise system might possibly be more vulnerable than most may think.
This review first appeared in somewhat condensed form on bookpleasures. com
Thanks for visiting my web site. While you are here, I invite you to look through the other pages and articles. Please feel free to comment in the space below.