IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/spmain/hal-01295776.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Back in the bazaar: taking Pierre Bourdieu to a trading room

Author

Listed:
  • Olivier Godechot

    (OSC - Observatoire sociologique du changement (Sciences Po, CNRS) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's theory of aesthetic judgment, this text offers an inductive account of financial reasoning inside a trading room. Driven to maximise bank profits, trading room operators do not find ‘one best way'. Rather they choose among several possible winning strategies: mathematical arbitrage, economic analysis, chartist analysis. These strategies differ sharply from one another in their conception of the market, method, proximity to scholarly knowledge, and legitimacy. We show that the choice of one method depends on a system of tastes and distastes that are both historical – depending on individuals' social and educational background – and relational – depending on the individual's relative position within the trading room viewed as a field.

Suggested Citation

  • Olivier Godechot, 2016. "Back in the bazaar: taking Pierre Bourdieu to a trading room," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-01295776, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:spmain:hal-01295776
    DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2015.1116461
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal-sciencespo.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01295776v2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal-sciencespo.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01295776v2/document
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/17530350.2015.1116461?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Horacio Ortiz, 2014. "The Limits of Financial Imagination: Free Investors, Efficient Markets, and Crisis," Post-Print hal-00966544, HAL.
    2. Catherine Aaron & Sébastien Galanti & Yamina Tadjeddine, 2004. "La gestion collective dans un marché agité : la dynamique des styles à partir des cartes de Kohonen," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 114(4), pages 507-526.
    3. Zaloom, Caitlin, 2006. "Out of the Pits," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226978130, Febrero.
    4. Fabian Muniesa, 2000. "Un robot walrasien : cotation électronique et justesse de la découverte des prix," Post-Print halshs-00087467, HAL.
    5. Olivier Godechot, 2008. "Stratégies financières autour d'une table," Reflets et perspectives de la vie économique, De Boeck Université, vol. 0(1), pages 144-156.
    6. Daniel Beunza & David Stark, 2004. "Tools of the trade: the socio-technology of arbitrage in a Wall Street trading room," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 13(2), pages 369-400, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/4ff88coju39nk8b11b5ghfc1ff is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Olivier Godechot, 2019. "Conclusion: What finance manufactures," Post-Print hal-03393812, HAL.
    3. Liliana Doganova & Martin Giraudeau & Hans Kjellberg & Claes-Fredrik Helgesson & Francis Lee & Alexandre Mallard & Andrea Mennicken & Fabian Muniesa & Ebba Sjögren & Teun Zuiderent-Jerak, 2018. "Five years! Have we not had enough of valuation studies by now?," Post-Print halshs-01935355, HAL.
    4. Michel Callon & Alvin E. Roth, 2021. "The design and performation of markets: a discussion," AMS Review, Springer;Academy of Marketing Science, vol. 11(3), pages 219-239, December.
    5. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4ff88coju39nk8b11b5ghfc1ff is not listed on IDEAS

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/36r82bk74h9hiai5p7mros4j61 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/36r82bk74h9hiai5p7mros4j61 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/4ff88coju39nk8b11b5ghfc1ff is not listed on IDEAS
    4. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4ff88coju39nk8b11b5ghfc1ff is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Horacio Ortiz, 2022. "Political Imaginaries of the Weighted Average Cost of Capital: A Conceptual Analysis," Post-Print halshs-03513082, HAL.
    6. Martha Poon, 2009. "From New Deal institutions to capital markets: commercial consumer risk scores and the making of subprime mortgage finance," Working Papers halshs-00359712, HAL.
    7. Olivier Godechot, 2019. "Conclusion: What finance manufactures," Post-Print hal-03393812, HAL.
    8. Poon, Martha, 2009. "From new deal institutions to capital markets: Commercial consumer risk scores and the making of subprime mortgage finance," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 654-674, July.
    9. Konadu, Magneta & Kalthoff, Herbert, 2013. "The infrastructure of financial markets: The case of statistical information," economic sociology. perspectives and conversations, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, vol. 14(3), pages 34-40.
    10. Llerena Guiu Searle, 2014. "Conflict and Commensuration: Contested Market Making in India's Private Real Estate Development Sector," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(1), pages 60-78, January.
    11. Michel Callon & Fabian Muniesa, 2005. "Economic markets as calculative collective devices," Post-Print halshs-00087477, HAL.
    12. Williams, James W., 2013. "Regulatory technologies, risky subjects, and financial boundaries: Governing ‘fraud’ in the financial markets," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 544-558.
    13. Walter, Lars & Styhre, Alexander, 2020. "Nursing, bedside care, and the organization of expert knowledge: Professional work as agencement," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 36(3).
    14. Aaron Z. Pitluck & Fabio Mattioli & Daniel Souleles, 2018. "Finance beyond function: Three causal explanations for financialization," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5(2), pages 157-171, June.
    15. Pinzur, David, 2016. "Making the grade: infrastructural semiotics and derivative market outcomes on the Chicago Board of Trade and New Orleans Cotton Exchange, 1856–1909," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 102988, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    16. Ipshita Ghosh, 2020. "Investment, value, and the making of entrepreneurship in India," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 190-202, June.
    17. Martha Poon, 2009. "From New Deal institutions to capital markets: commercial consumer risk scores and the making of subprime mortgage finance," Post-Print halshs-00359712, HAL.
    18. Ortiz, Horacio, 2009. "Investors and efficient markets: The everyday imaginaries of investment management," economic sociology. perspectives and conversations, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, vol. 11(1), pages 34-40.
    19. Canay Özden-Schilling, 2016. "The infrastructure of markets: From electric power to electronic data," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 3(1), pages 68-80, January.
    20. Desiree Fields, 2022. "Automated landlord: Digital technologies and post-crisis financial accumulation," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 54(1), pages 160-181, February.
    21. Matthew Zook & Michael H Grote, 2017. "The microgeographies of global finance: High-frequency trading and the construction of information inequality," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(1), pages 121-140, January.
    22. Philipp Heimberger & Jakob Kapeller, 2017. "The performativity of potential output: pro-cyclicality and path dependency in coordinating European fiscal policies," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(5), pages 904-928, September.
    23. Kalman Applbaum, 2012. "Markets: Places, Principles and Integrations," Chapters, in: James G. Carrier (ed.), A Handbook of Economic Anthropology, Second Edition, chapter 15, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    24. Liliana Doganova & Martin Giraudeau & Hans Kjellberg & Claes-Fredrik Helgesson & Francis Lee & Alexandre Mallard & Andrea Mennicken & Fabian Muniesa & Ebba Sjögren & Teun Zuiderent-Jerak, 2018. "Five years! Have we not had enough of valuation studies by now?," Post-Print halshs-01935355, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Finance; Rationality; Field theory; Habitus; Class;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:spmain:hal-01295776. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Contact - Sciences Po Departement of Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.