Ann-Christina Lange

Bio: Ann-Christina Lange is an academic researcher from Copenhagen Business School. The author has contributed to research in topics: High-frequency trading & Financial market. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 8 publications receiving 206 citations.

Markets, bodies, and rhythms: : A rhythmanalysis of financial markets from open-outcry trading to high-frequency trading

Abstract: This article explores the relationship between bodily rhythms and market rhythms in two distinctly different financial market configurations, namely the open-outcry pit (prevalent especially in the early 20th century) and present-day high-frequency trading. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre's rhythmanalysis, we show how traders seek to calibrate their bodily rhythms to those of the market. We argue that, in the case of early-20th-century open-outcry trading pits, traders tried to enact a total merger of bodily and market rhythms. We also demonstrate how, in the 1920s and '30s, market observers began to respond to a widely perceived problem, namely that market rhythms might be contagious and that some form of separation of bodily and market rhythms might therefore be needed. Finally, we show how current high-frequency trading, despite being purely algorithmic, does not render the traders' bodies irrelevant. Yet high-frequency trading does change the role of the body rather than seeking to attune their bodies to th...

On Studying Algorithms Ethnographically: Making Sense of Objects of Ignorance

Abstract: In this article, we make sense of financial algorithms as new objects of concern for organizational ethnography. We conceive of algorithms as ‘objects of ignorance’ jeopardizing traditional ethnogr...

Organizational ignorance: an ethnographic study of high-frequency trading

Abstract: This paper provides an analysis of strategic uses of ignorance or not-knowing in one of the most secretive industries within the financial sector. The focus of the paper is on the relation between imitation and ignorance within the organizational structure of high-frequency trading (HFT) firms. In social studies of finance (SSF) literature imitation is considered a strategic act, i.e. imitation is a term applied when traders copy the strategies of other traders. I wish to turn this relation between ignorance and imitation on its head and consider ignorance itself as a strategic unknown and investigate the kinds of imitations that might be produced from structures of not-knowing (i.e. structures intended to divide, obscure and protect knowledge). This point is illustrated through ethnographic studies and interviews within five HFT firms. The data show how a black-box structure of ignorance is replicated within the organizational setting of these firms and re-enacted by the traders. Towards the end ...

Cultures of high-frequency trading: mapping the landscape of algorithmic developments in contemporary financial markets

Abstract: As part of ongoing work to lay a foundation for social studies of high-frequency trading (HFT), this paper introduces the culture(s) of HFT as a sociological problem relating to knowledge and practice. HFT is often discussed as a purely technological development, where all that matters is the speed of allocating, processing and transmitting data. Indeed, the speed at which trades are executed and data transmitted is accelerating, and it is fair to say that algorithms are now the primary interacting agents operating in the financial markets. However, we contend that HFT is first and foremost a cultural phenomenon. More specifically, both individuals and collective agents – such as algorithms – might be considered cultural entities, charged with very different ways of processing information, making sense of it and turning it into knowledge and practice. This raises issues relating to situated knowledge, distributed cognition and action, the assignment of responsibility when regulating high-speed alg...

Algorithms at Work: The New Contested Terrain of Control

Abstract: The widespread implementation of algorithmic technologies in organizations prompts questions about how algorithms may reshape organizational control. We use Edwards’ (1979) perspective of “conteste...

An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets:

Abstract: economic effects of FDI flows to countries in the global South. Though the book alludes to Southern unionists and other laymen criticizing Northern FDI for crowding out domestic investment and fostering unemployment and inequality, no reference whatsoever is made to the empirical work of scholars such as Jeffrey Kentor, William Dixon, and Terry Boswell, whose articles in the American Journal of Sociology and the American Sociological Review corroborate these criticisms. Southern fears of growth-reducing FDI effects are reduced in Guillén’s study to a simple image problem, to be solved by more efficient public relations efforts on the part of the multinationals. In fact, Guillén claims, “Spanish multinationals .|.|. are moving in the right direction, namely .|.|. beefing up their public-relations image throughout the region as long-term investors and philanthropists committed to the host country’s development” (p. 173).