Part 4/10:
The seeds of high-frequency trading were sown in the gambling environments of Las Vegas in the late 1960s. Pioneers sought to leverage computers to devise strategies that could improve their chances at card games. Figures like Edward Thorp and Blair Hull developed algorithms designed for card counting and predicting outcomes, laying the groundwork for later applications in finance.
Transcending blackjack tables, physicists like D.E. Farmer turned their attention to roulette, successfully devising ways to predict the ball’s path. Their inventions gradually reshaped gambling and, eventually, stock trading.