It might seem strange that, in 2025, WMLR is publishing a review of this 2012 book but here's why it's not.

There are three good reasons why this book is relevant.

First, it's a rollicking good story about the people who, Patterson says, build the technology that led to automated trading and all the consequences that flowed from that. What is particularly fascinating is the similarity in characteristics between those and the people who have built the crypto industry and are now running e.g. generativeAI shops. There is, without doubt a "type."

Secondly, while the terminology might change, the concepts remain fundamentally similar: from the off-market trading clubs referred to in Cut-throats and Brigands (1) at the turn of the 20th Century to the dark pools of the early 21st to the fascination of "crypto-mixers" today, it's all the same, based on inter-customer, intra-bank dealing arrangements that are centuries old. 

Third, it proves that unregulated (in the broadest sense) of computerised processes driven by algorithms will have unintended consequences. 

But the book goes further: it shows how cartels continue to control trading, even a century after scandals drew attention to the market manipulation by some under the guise of regulating the industry. Major stock exchanges are shown to have worked to create advantage for established players and to create barriers to entry for newcomers. 

When change arrived, it was not always used with the best of intentions. The book quote Bernie Madoff as saying "we determined that the best thing for us to do was to take the human being out of the equation." And conscience, he might have added. 

The book has value not only as a cautionary tale from history but also as an indicator of how the same path is being followed and the same risks are developing. It's not a guide to the past: it's an indicator of the future. 

Cut-throats and Brigands: Morris-Cotterill - https://amzn.to/4fhr3kC"