Markets are rocking and rolling today, and my planned piece is taking a little more elbow grease than expected… so in lieu of that, I offer you my favorite Wired article of all time.

The High Tech Trifecta is all about the world of high stakes horse racing. As the piece leads off,

They’ve got multimillion-dollar bankrolls, lightning-fast networks, and a probability-crunching system that leaves the odds in the dust. Meet the pari-mutuel fund managers who are redefining horse racing.

The opening lead-in:

Crisscrossing telephone wires snake along the carpeting of Rod Dufficy’s cluttered home office near Hong Kong’s Happy Valley racetrack. Dressed down in baggy black velour sweatpants and a matching gym shirt, Dufficy, 32, sits at a large L-shaped desk, rocking back in his chair and eyeing three computer screens crowded with numbers. He is cramming for a race that begins in 22 minutes, calling up information from an online database and sifting it through a betting-analysis program built into his system. The Australian is one of Hong Kong’s elite breed of super-successful professional gamblers, computer-assisted horse bettors who work in teams and net millions at the races each year. Tonight, however, is not one of Dufficy’s big-money sessions; he is down US$300,000 heading into this race. “I’m going to have a lot of outlay on this next one,” he says. “Maybe $550,000.”

The piece hints at the obvious trading parallels too:

“Racing is becoming more and more like a stock market model,” says one insider. Horses should be thought of as Dell or Microsoft – their past performances are the equivalent of economic charts.

In future we’ll have much more to say on the deep similarities between global markets and parimutuel betting systems.

In the meantime, go read the whole thing.

JS

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