I agree with a lot of what you say, but I think it is important to point out that algorithms can invest too. They don't only trade. Anytime you use software to

I agree with a lot of what you say, but I think it is important to point out that algorithms can invest too. They don't only trade. Anytime you use software to buy or sell securities, people assume it is technical trading, or worse, high-frequency trading. The truth is there aren't enough people working on making algorithms that invest rather than trade, because the ROI for trading is more apparent. I work at Quantopian, and our goal is to make it possible for more people to explore algorithmic investing. I agree the social utility of from increasing liquidity from current levels is at best diminishing returns, but algorithms could bring the same drop in costs and increase in quality for money management that it brought to trading. That's a benefit to individuals, pension funds, charitable endowments, and anyone else that has to save and plan for the future. Financial professions couldn't have a worse rap these days, much of it deserved, but there are real social problems that require financial solutions. People need to save for retirement, plan for the kids' college tuition, and take on mortgages. I think it is really good for society to have smart people work on investment management. Especially if they are automating, collaborating, and discussing their work openly - the opposite of today's Wall Street. I like that QuantBlock did something original, and I love that they are striving for really broad access. We think the key to advancing algorithmic investment is to create more access so smart hackers can tinker with investment strategies. Those folks should be able to explore and test ideas/algos without spending a few years building a backtester, or a few years' of salary on data. That's why our backtester is free to use at quantopian.com, and why the source code will be released at PyData NYC (http://blog.quantopian.com/pydatanyc-here-we-come/ http://blog.quantopian.com/pydatanyc-here-we-come/). I wrote more about where we want Quantopian to go, and where I think finance needs to go on our blog: http://blog.quantopian.com/quantopian-manifesto/ http://blog.quantopian.com/quantopian-manifesto/