Millman, Gregory J.

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Millman, Gregory J.

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Earned M.B.A. and M.A.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Warner Books, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

CAREER: Worked in international banking and as a consultant. Alicia Patterson Foundation, fellow.

WRITINGS:

The Floating Battlefield: Corporate Strategies in the Currency Wars, AMACOM (New York, NY), 1990.

The Vandals' Crown: How Rebel Currency Traders Overthrew the World's Central Banks, Free Press (New York, NY), 1995.

The Day Traders: The Untold Story of the Extreme Investors and How They Changed Wall Street Forever, Times Business (New York, NY), 1999.

Contributor to periodicals, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Institutional Investor, Barron's, and Forbes.

SIDELIGHTS: Journalist Gregory J. Millman is a frequent contributor to finance and business publications and he has written a number of books that investigate, uncover, and castigate what Millman perceives to be faults in, and manipulations of, the banking and investment systems. In the course of his work he was targeted by the Internal Revenue Service when he noted in a 1991 article that the agency had failed to collect millions of dollars in taxes from corporations, including General Motors, that used currency and interest rate hedging to protect profits. Because Millman refused to name his sources, the Justice Department subpoenaed his telephone records and those of acquaintances, people he was interviewing for other stories, and the Alicia Patterson Foundation, where he is a fellow. As Linda Hunt noted in the Columbia Journalism Review, this is "the latest reminder of how far the government will go to ferret out news leaks."

In Millman's first volume, The Floating Battlefield: Corporate Strategies in the Currency Wars, he studies currency risk, particularly as applied to his subject companies, which include Union Carbide, Caterpillar, Monsanto, Chrysler, and Digital Equipment.

An Asiaweek writer called Millman's second volume, The Vandals' Crown: How Rebel Currency Traders Overthrew the World's Central Banks, "a well-researched and sober analysis of the world's financial system." In this book Millman contends that because of the increased globalization of finance, currencies are subject to the whim of foreign exchange traders who base their decisions on rumor and speculation. He profiles a number of key players who have been responsible for the changes in the financial markets, as well as for new instruments, such as derivatives. He provides a history of financial and government conflict that led to the September 1992 European currency crisis, during which speculator George Soros made two billion dollars in a single day. As Michael M. Thomas wrote in the Washington Monthly, "Millman takes the reader a very long way toward knowing how a handful of anonymous currency speculators can, in an instant, wreak havoc on international finance."

With The Day Traders: The Untold Story of the Extreme Investors and How They Changed Wall Street Forever, Millman provides a history of day trading and an overview of the lifestyle of a person who chooses such a career. He notes that with a little instruction and a computer, anyone can quit their job and sit in front of a screen, making as many as hundreds of trades each day in a pursuit that can become addictive. These traders may hold a stock for mere minutes and so cannot really be called investors as they furiously buy and sell in response to the volatility of the market. Millman is not a proponent of day trading. In an article written for Jinn, he emphasized that "neophyte day traders are told to expect three to six months of losses before they begin to win. But by then, they are often hooked—and eventually, most of them are busted." Some have also gone berserk, as in the case of one day trader in Atlanta, Georgia, who went on a killing rampage.

A Business Week contributor noted that while many books have been published on this subject, most are substandard and written by traders who are promoting their own firms or programs. The writer called Millman's book "a welcome departure from this trend," and added that the author's "greatest feat comes in providing an interesting and understandable description of the development of modern electronic trading." Day trading has accelerated with the availability of faster internet connections, developments in software, and the increased number of discount online brokerage services.

Diana B. Henriques wrote in the New York Times Book Review that Millman writes about the day traders "in a muscular, color-splashed style that perfectly conveys the video-game rhythms of their world…. Yet as the scenery races by he wisely provides context, connecting the emergence of day trading to the history of the American market…. Millman makes this arcane world accessible without glorifying it, and he is never less than brutally honest about the high risk of ruin that confronts new traders."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Asiaweek, April 10, 1996, review of The Vandals' Crown: How Rebel Currency Traders Overthrew the World's Central Banks.

Booklist, July, 1995, David Rouse, review of The Vandals' Crown, p. 1847; November 1, 1999, Brad Hooper, review of The Day Traders: The Untold Story of the Extreme Investors and How They Changed Wall Street Forever, p. 492.

Business America, May 7, 1990, review of The Floating Battlefield: Corporate Strategies in the Currency Wars, p. 25.

Business Week, December 27, 1999, review of The Day Traders, p. 32.

Canadian Business Review, July 1, 1995, Eric Wolfe, review of The Vandals' Crown, p. 34.

Columbia Journalism Review, January, 1993, Linda Hunt, "Phone trace," p. 13.

Foreign Affairs, March-April, 1995, Michael Lewis, review of The Vandals' Crown, p. 137.

Harvard Business Review, March-April, 1995, Richard O'Brien, review of The Vandals' Crown, p. 144.

Library Journal, November 1, 1999, Patrick Mahoney, review of The Day Traders, p. 98.

New York Times Book Review, November 14, 1999, Diana B. Henriques, review of The Day Traders, p. 32.

Publishers Weekly, October 25, 1999, review of The Day Traders, p. 67.

San Francisco Chronicle, November 14, 1999, David Lazarus, review of The Day Traders, p. 8.

Washington Monthly, July-August, 1995, Michael M. Thomas, review of The Vandals' Crown, p. 53.