6 ms·

it's behind paywall, can someone tell just what's this software about?

swampthinker 10y ago
You can click "web" which will provide you a link to the article without the paywall. But just for you: "Called Securities DataBase, or SecDB, the system remains Goldman’s prime tool for measuring risk and analyzing the prices of securities, and it calculates 23 billion prices across 2.8 million positions daily. It has played a crucial role in many of the seminal moments of the firm’s recent history, including its controversial trading just ahead of the financial crisis."
- molsongolden 10y ago
  Just to continue on: "Many of those tools are being offered in the form of web-based applications that customers can customize and operate on their own." Sounds like they are turning what used to be heavily guarded internal software into client-facing apps.
  - internal_tools 10y ago
    I would assume because this space is becoming more of a commodity and their tool is no longer unique -- on it's face. So by making it available to customers they can garner goodwill and entrench themselves.
    - p4wnc6 10y ago
      The tool is also extremely messy internally, written in a proprietary language that resembled a very early version of Python and has accrued nearly unthinkable technical debt. Delivering usage via webservice lets them better hide the dysfunction on the other end of a service call. This whole topic is not all that newsworthy. The team within Goldman that had architected and developed this years ago had spun out into a consulting group that essentially reimplemented the same thing in Bank of America (Quartz), JPMorgan (Athena) and many others, now including Morgan Stanley, and even trickling down to smaller banks like PNC. I consider it one of the biggest ripoffs in modern finance that those organizations have paid untold fortunes to adopt the Goldman-like approach, sometimes even with new or additional proprietary languages brought in on the project. It also adds systemic risk for society because it further correlates these internal banking systems between the largest banks. If something goes systematically wrong with it in one place, there's a comparatively high risk the same sort of thing can or will go wrong in another too. If we were bearing that risk for a good reason it might be OK. But really we're only bearing it because of the superficial branding of Goldman, and the pressure on banks to hand wave and appear to be doing something in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. And so they go for what looks politically defensible (e.g. "well, this is what Goldman did and they survived the crash" -- despite it being widely researched and reported that Goldman's position in the crash truly had nothing at all to do with superior risk management systems and was a mixture of political favors and luck) instead of anything sensible from a system design point of view.
      - YuriNiyazov 10y ago
        Kirat and his buddy are now "Washington square partners", and working on the same product to sell to "the masses." F9
        InternetPerson 10y ago
        haha, but of course you mean ctrl+F9 -- you probably edited multiple files... I completely agree with the parent and grandparent posts! I worked with one of the SecDB clones for three years at a Too Big To Fail bank, and it was criminally bad (imho). It's snake oil.
        Maven911 10y ago
        Sorry for being dense, but can you expand: Why was it snake oil ?
        InternetPerson 10y ago
        I agree with jnordwick that "Quartz and Athena are both failed projects." For example, Mike Dubno, Kirat Singh, and three other managing directors on the Quartz project are all gone [1]. I agree with the grandparent post that "Goldman's position in the crash truly had nothing at all to do with superior risk management systems and was a mixture of political favors and luck" The snake oil in this case is what p4wnc6 (who's spot on) highlighted: "The team within Goldman that had architected and developed this years ago had spun out into a consulting group that essentially reimplemented the same thing" [at other banks]. The product that they sold (a SecDB clone) is pure snake oil, and the projects (which were massively expensive) delivered very little value. Consider: If SecDB really lives up to the hype, then why would Goldman let all these other banks steal Goldman developers and straight-up copy it? [1] http://news.efinancialcareers.com/us-en/253040/three-bank-of-america-merrill-lynch-technology-managing-directors-have-departed/ http://news.efinancialcareers.com/us-en/253040/three-bank-of...
      - TheLarch 10y ago
        Besides introducing systematic risk, the sale of this software by Goldman smells fishy. Despite the Blankfein quote about maybe selling for $5 billion back in the day, if the software is what they purport it to be, wouldn't selling it be akin to Amazon licensing their product distribution to Walmart? I've wondered what these million dollar per month programmers do on Wall Street. This really puts it in perspective. On that note, it's completely depressing to see many of the best minds of our time working on shit software that adds nothing to society. Another swath of them are working on getting people to click on ads for Facebook and Google.
    - Keyframe 10y ago
      And they can gauge where client's interests lie at. Something like google could (what I would do if I were google) gauge interest in various stocks and commodities people search for and make some kind of model based on that. Ye olde adage, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.
      - datr 10y ago
        I think that would be insider trading on Google's part.
        Keyframe 10y ago
        How, why? Especially if they're not trading their own stock.
        datr 10y ago
        I was mainly thinking of this comment [0] and the story it was in response to. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8967902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8967902
        Keyframe 10y ago
        Kind of funny where Google decides what's legal or not.
        tsukikage 10y ago
        Using non public information obtained from a client in dealings with another client, or at all on the public side of the firm, would breach Chinese walls. Never mind internal controls, most jurisdictions have relevant legislation to prevent exactly this behaviour.
        Keyframe 10y ago
        There is no non-public info in this case. It's same as if you were in a public hall with a lot of people, who talk only about stocks, and writing down how many, how often and when particular stocks are mentioned and in which context (buy, sell, various). Morally ambiguous thing is that hall belongs to Google and they're the only one up in the balcony, which is the only place you can hear all the people from.
- snarfy 10y ago
  We really need to stop with this practice of clicking web to work around their paywall. It doesn't work on mobile and is basically a dark pattern.
- Yhippa 10y ago
  "web" works inconsistently on mobile
mschaef 10y ago
I'm pretty sure they're referring to SecDB. There isn't much known about SecDB outside of Goldman, but I think the essence is that it: 1. Is a distributed data store for market positions, etc. 2. There's a dataflow/spreadsheet-like valuation engine on top of the data store 3. It's had long-term and senior level support among management, and most/all of GS's positions and businesses are available within SecDB. 4. There's a large pool of internal talent that's well acquainted with SecDB and how to use it. So... it gives GS an easy way to see where they are, and then run models to figure out where they might be under different hypothetical scenarios. What's noteworthy about this to me is that while they may be 'giving away' points 1 and 2 from my list, points 3 and 4 are the bigger competitive differentiators for Goldman. Even if another bank immediately adopts SecDB, while they may get the technology, it'll take them quite a while to integrate it as fully into their culture and business. SecDB implemented for a small bit of a big bank and run by a bunch of relative newcomers is a very different thing than SecDB as it might be implemented at Goldman.
- fnord123 10y ago
  It's been available outside Goldman for a long time. Cantab Capital had based their systems on it as long ago as 2006. The founders were ex Goldman and wangled some kind of deal where they could use the GS systems.
  - jamessb 10y ago
    IIRC from a conversation with an employee, the two were initially very close: I think the deal included something like CC co-locating servers in a GS datacenter as well as licensing its software, but both ended several years ago in anticipation of a change in regulation.
- rdtsc 10y ago
  > There isn't much known about SecDB outside of Goldman Erm... https://github.com/saleyn/secdb https://github.com/saleyn/secdb Written in Erlang with a C driver for low level stuff. Author is Serge Aleynikov. Ex-GS employee sued in multiple courts over many years by GS. But yeah, not "officially known" as in they released, but there is probably some association there. Just a guess ;-)

You can click "web" which will provide you a link to the article without the paywall. But just for you: "Called Securities DataBase, or SecDB, the system remains Goldman’s prime tool for measuring risk and analyzing the prices of securities, and it calculates 23 billion prices across 2.8 million positions daily. It has played a crucial role in many of the seminal moments of the firm’s recent history, including its controversial trading just ahead of the financial crisis."

molsongolden 10y ago
Just to continue on: "Many of those tools are being offered in the form of web-based applications that customers can customize and operate on their own." Sounds like they are turning what used to be heavily guarded internal software into client-facing apps.
- internal_tools 10y ago
  I would assume because this space is becoming more of a commodity and their tool is no longer unique -- on it's face. So by making it available to customers they can garner goodwill and entrench themselves.
  - p4wnc6 10y ago
    The tool is also extremely messy internally, written in a proprietary language that resembled a very early version of Python and has accrued nearly unthinkable technical debt. Delivering usage via webservice lets them better hide the dysfunction on the other end of a service call. This whole topic is not all that newsworthy. The team within Goldman that had architected and developed this years ago had spun out into a consulting group that essentially reimplemented the same thing in Bank of America (Quartz), JPMorgan (Athena) and many others, now including Morgan Stanley, and even trickling down to smaller banks like PNC. I consider it one of the biggest ripoffs in modern finance that those organizations have paid untold fortunes to adopt the Goldman-like approach, sometimes even with new or additional proprietary languages brought in on the project. It also adds systemic risk for society because it further correlates these internal banking systems between the largest banks. If something goes systematically wrong with it in one place, there's a comparatively high risk the same sort of thing can or will go wrong in another too. If we were bearing that risk for a good reason it might be OK. But really we're only bearing it because of the superficial branding of Goldman, and the pressure on banks to hand wave and appear to be doing something in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. And so they go for what looks politically defensible (e.g. "well, this is what Goldman did and they survived the crash" -- despite it being widely researched and reported that Goldman's position in the crash truly had nothing at all to do with superior risk management systems and was a mixture of political favors and luck) instead of anything sensible from a system design point of view.
    - YuriNiyazov 10y ago
      Kirat and his buddy are now "Washington square partners", and working on the same product to sell to "the masses." F9
      - InternetPerson 10y ago
        haha, but of course you mean ctrl+F9 -- you probably edited multiple files... I completely agree with the parent and grandparent posts! I worked with one of the SecDB clones for three years at a Too Big To Fail bank, and it was criminally bad (imho). It's snake oil.
        Maven911 10y ago
        Sorry for being dense, but can you expand: Why was it snake oil ?
        InternetPerson 10y ago
        I agree with jnordwick that "Quartz and Athena are both failed projects." For example, Mike Dubno, Kirat Singh, and three other managing directors on the Quartz project are all gone [1]. I agree with the grandparent post that "Goldman's position in the crash truly had nothing at all to do with superior risk management systems and was a mixture of political favors and luck" The snake oil in this case is what p4wnc6 (who's spot on) highlighted: "The team within Goldman that had architected and developed this years ago had spun out into a consulting group that essentially reimplemented the same thing" [at other banks]. The product that they sold (a SecDB clone) is pure snake oil, and the projects (which were massively expensive) delivered very little value. Consider: If SecDB really lives up to the hype, then why would Goldman let all these other banks steal Goldman developers and straight-up copy it? [1] http://news.efinancialcareers.com/us-en/253040/three-bank-of-america-merrill-lynch-technology-managing-directors-have-departed/ http://news.efinancialcareers.com/us-en/253040/three-bank-of...
    - TheLarch 10y ago
      Besides introducing systematic risk, the sale of this software by Goldman smells fishy. Despite the Blankfein quote about maybe selling for $5 billion back in the day, if the software is what they purport it to be, wouldn't selling it be akin to Amazon licensing their product distribution to Walmart? I've wondered what these million dollar per month programmers do on Wall Street. This really puts it in perspective. On that note, it's completely depressing to see many of the best minds of our time working on shit software that adds nothing to society. Another swath of them are working on getting people to click on ads for Facebook and Google.
  - Keyframe 10y ago
    And they can gauge where client's interests lie at. Something like google could (what I would do if I were google) gauge interest in various stocks and commodities people search for and make some kind of model based on that. Ye olde adage, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.
    - datr 10y ago
      I think that would be insider trading on Google's part.
      - Keyframe 10y ago
        How, why? Especially if they're not trading their own stock.
        datr 10y ago
        I was mainly thinking of this comment [0] and the story it was in response to. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8967902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8967902
        Keyframe 10y ago
        Kind of funny where Google decides what's legal or not.
        tsukikage 10y ago
        Using non public information obtained from a client in dealings with another client, or at all on the public side of the firm, would breach Chinese walls. Never mind internal controls, most jurisdictions have relevant legislation to prevent exactly this behaviour.
        Keyframe 10y ago
        There is no non-public info in this case. It's same as if you were in a public hall with a lot of people, who talk only about stocks, and writing down how many, how often and when particular stocks are mentioned and in which context (buy, sell, various). Morally ambiguous thing is that hall belongs to Google and they're the only one up in the balcony, which is the only place you can hear all the people from.
snarfy 10y ago
We really need to stop with this practice of clicking web to work around their paywall. It doesn't work on mobile and is basically a dark pattern.
Yhippa 10y ago
"web" works inconsistently on mobile

mschaef 10y ago

I'm pretty sure they're referring to SecDB. There isn't much known about SecDB outside of Goldman, but I think the essence is that it: 1. Is a distributed data store for market positions, etc. 2. There's a dataflow/spreadsheet-like valuation engine on top of the data store 3. It's had long-term and senior level support among management, and most/all of GS's positions and businesses are available within SecDB. 4. There's a large pool of internal talent that's well acquainted with SecDB and how to use it. So... it gives GS an easy way to see where they are, and then run models to figure out where they might be under different hypothetical scenarios. What's noteworthy about this to me is that while they may be 'giving away' points 1 and 2 from my list, points 3 and 4 are the bigger competitive differentiators for Goldman. Even if another bank immediately adopts SecDB, while they may get the technology, it'll take them quite a while to integrate it as fully into their culture and business. SecDB implemented for a small bit of a big bank and run by a bunch of relative newcomers is a very different thing than SecDB as it might be implemented at Goldman.

fnord123 10y ago
It's been available outside Goldman for a long time. Cantab Capital had based their systems on it as long ago as 2006. The founders were ex Goldman and wangled some kind of deal where they could use the GS systems.
- jamessb 10y ago
  IIRC from a conversation with an employee, the two were initially very close: I think the deal included something like CC co-locating servers in a GS datacenter as well as licensing its software, but both ended several years ago in anticipation of a change in regulation.
rdtsc 10y ago
> There isn't much known about SecDB outside of Goldman Erm... https://github.com/saleyn/secdb https://github.com/saleyn/secdb Written in Erlang with a C driver for low level stuff. Author is Serge Aleynikov. Ex-GS employee sued in multiple courts over many years by GS. But yeah, not "officially known" as in they released, but there is probably some association there. Just a guess ;-)