Trading Beyond Understanding

Machine Learning, Risk, and Markets

Christian Borch

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9781503645523
  9781503636804
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781503645530
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Political Economy
• Index: Social Sciences

Machine learning is fundamentally transforming financial markets. Where trading strategies were once crafted by human experts—executed manually or through pre-coded rules—firms now build models that generate the strategies themselves. These are not just tools but trading automatons: semi-independent systems designed to learn from markets and act on their own. Drawing on over a decade of fieldwork in financial markets, Christian Borch offers a rare inside look at how these systems are built, the risks they pose, and how they challenge our understanding of markets and decision-making. As trading automatons grow more complex and opaque—even to their designers—new sociological questions emerge: What happens when machines become the primary agents in markets? And how should we understand economic action when human judgment is no longer at the center? Trading Beyond Understanding is a powerful investigation of machine agency, market transformation, and the shifting boundaries between technological systems and social life.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• One. Two Tales of the City
• Two. Human Action at a Distance: First-Generation Automated Trading Systems
• Three. Creating Trading Automatons: The Rise of Second-Generation Systems
• Four. Risk, Reliability, Regulation
• Five. Explaining Automatons’ Action and Interaction
• Six. Automatons Unbound: Implications for Sociology and Beyond
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix: Studying Financiers in the Era of Automation and Machine Learning
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Series List