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Author of "Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines and Wired Markets," David Leinweber is one the greatest financial innovators of our time. As a keynote speaker, David Leinweber helps audience learn and laugh at the worlds of finance, technology and the economy as they go beyond the numbers to see exactly how technology has become more responsible for managing modern markets.

In his intriguing and entertaining presentations, David Leinweber discusses where technology on Wall Street has been, what it has meant and how it will impact the markets of tomorrow. Currently a Fellow in Finance at the University of California Berkeley, Leinweber is also a semi-serial entrepreneur who established two visionary financial technology firms, Integrated Analytics and Codexa. In between, for nearly a decade, Leinweber successfully managed over $6 billion of institutional quant equity portfolios spanning 25 global strategies. He also writes a monthly column: "Nerd on Wall Street" for Institutional Investor which is a "back-of-the-magazine" feature inspired by his book.

Dr. Leinweber's professional interests focus on how modern information technologies are best applied in trading and investing, and how technology affects global financial markets. As the founder and advisor to financial technology companies, and as a quantitative investment manager, he is an active participant in today’s transformation of markets. Clients at his consulting and software business include some of the world’s largest investment managers, hedge funds, brokers and exchanges. All build on a history of innovation in financial technology.

At the RAND Corporation, he directed research on real-time applications of artificial intelligence that led to the founding of Integrated Analytics Corporation. IAC was acquired by the Investment Technology Group, (NYSE:ITG) and, with the addition of electronic order execution, its product became QuantEx, an electronic execution system still in use for millions of institutional equity transactions daily. Large institutions concerned with controlling transactions costs and proprietary traders found them particularly valuable.

As managing director at First Quadrant, he was responsible for institutional quantitative global equity portfolios totaling $6 billion. More than twenty long and market neutral strategies utilized a wide range of computerized techniques for stock selection and efficient trading. He won five rounds against The Wall Street Journal’s investment dartboard. Quantitative investing is driven by electronic information, and the Internet dramatically transformed the financial information landscape. This led to the founding of Codexa Corporation, a Net based information collection, aggregation and filtering service for institutional investors and traders. The company’s clients included many of the world’s largest brokerage and investment firms.

As the founding director of the Center for Innovative Financial Technology at UC Berkeley, and previously as a visiting faculty member at Caltech, Leinweber worked on practical applications of ideas at the juncture of technology and finance. He has advanced the state of the art in the application of information technology in both the sell-side world of trading and the buy-side world of quantitative investment.

In his misspent youth, he graduated from MIT, in physics and computer science, where he was one of the first 5000 people on the Internet. That was when it was called the ARPAnet and wasn’t cool. He also has a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard. But on a good day, it’s hard to tell.

David Leinweber's Speaking Topics:

Technology and the Great Mess of '08
The financial crisis of 2008 is one of the great technological disasters in history. None of this would have been possible without computers. Who is to blame for the interconnected structure for disaster that came so close to taking the global economy with it when it crashed? What should we be doing to avoid a dreadful encore performance?  Part IV of "Nerds on Wall Street" sorted out the key technological issues that caused so much damage: a lack of transparency in markets for what we now call "toxic assets", which led to pricing by models instead of by markets. Models that proved toxically flawed, applied so recklessly, they nearly broke capitalism.

This talk brings this discussion up to date. Are current proposals based on the right information and data? Are modelers learning that the models aren't the markets? Can we achieve safe markets without stifling innovation?

Made-to-Order Speeches
No two of David Leinweber’s speeches are the same. Each speech is tailored to developments in your industry and for the audience and setting. He relates his topics to the state of the markets and the debate on the future of finance. He delivers insight, with clarity and wit, to people trying to navigate through unprecedented times.

Seeing Your Business as Investors See It
Investors collectively look at all firms in search of investment opportunity. They bring a great deal of expertise and technology to this effort. Individual firms can use the same methods for business intelligence─to see their own firms as others see it, and to see competitors in the full light of the web.

Investing in the Web Era
Technology transforms the playing field of investment information. The middlemen are gone in trading, trading floors are vanishing. Reporters are role as information middlemen is redefined in the web era. If you had everything computationally, where would you put it, financially?

Additional Background:

Education

SB, Physics and Electrical Engineering/Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MA, Applied Mathematics, Harvard University
PhD, Applied Mathematics, Harvard University

Positions Held

2008 - present, Haas Fellow in Finance, Haas School of Business 
2008 - present, Founding Director, Center for Innovative Financial Technology
2001 - present, Principal of independent development and research firm, Leinweber & Co.
2001 - 2003, Visiting faculty in economics, California Institute of Technology
2003, Adjunct Professor, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California
1999 - 2001, Founder, CEO and Chairman, Codexa
1993 - 1999, Managing Director/Partner, First Quadrant
1987 - 1990, Founder, Integrated Analytics (later ITG)
1978 - 1984, Information Scientist, The RAND Corporation

Additional Publications

• Nerds on Wall Street Blog
• Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines and Wired Markets, Wiley Financial, 2009.
• How I Became a Quant, opening chapter. Wiley, 2007
• "Algos vs. Algos." Institutional Investor Alpha (February 2007).
• "Stupid Data Miner Tricks." Journal of Investing (Spring 2007).
• "If you had everything computationally, where would you put it, financially?" Journal of Portfolio Management (Winter 2005).
• "Delving Deeper, The Text Frontier." Bloomberg Wealth Management (November 2003).
• "Perils and Pitfalls of Evolutionary Computation in Finance," Journal of Investing (Winter 2003).
• "Markets, Technology and Trust." Financial Times October 2002, and Caltech Working Paper 1143.

The keynote videos below represent two types of presentations from David Leinweber: please contact us for details and additional speaking samples.