Abstract
On July 3rd, 2010, I got an email out of the blue from finance professor Jay Muthuswamy of Kent State University. The email started a long and profound friendship, and also this journal, and also the field of algorithmic finance.
He said he loved my paper showing that the efficient market hypothesis holds if and only if P = NP and he asked if I had any similar ones. I told him the problem was there was no perfect journal for that line of research, and that I'd been toying with the idea of starting a journal of “algorithmic finance” as a bridge between computer science and finance. The more we chatted about it over the next few days, the more excited we became. Within a week, we began inviting people to our advisory and editorial board. And essentially that same board has remained with us all these years, other than the sad passing of Ken Arrow.
Working with Jay was such a treat. He was always instantly available and endlessly curious about everything. He was also a unique thinker. He passed away a few years ago (Maymin et al., 2022) just before modern AI came on the scene. I often wonder what he would think about all the innovations happening now.
We published our first issue in December 2011. Jay had handled the peer review of my paper (Maymin, 2011), ensuring it was reviewed by multiple experts in multiple fields. He insisted we publish it on page one, issue one, volume one, since it had been the catalyst for the journal and the main source of interest for many of our board members. I had thought the field and the journal of algorithmic finance would be a continuation of that way of thinking, combining computer science and finance. For a while, it was. In recent years, more of the submissions began to focus on machine learning and similar approaches. They say “science is what scientists do.” To that end, perhaps algorithmic finance is what is published in Algorithmic Finance.
Today, I'm stepping down as the founding editor-in-chief. I’m really proud of the journal Jay and I, and our advisory and editorial board members, built and grew over the past decade-plus. Our mutual baby is all grown up, a teenager now. She may forget us but we will never forget her. I am sure she will continue to grow and prosper under the stewardship of Rick Cooper and Ben Van Vliet. I’m excited to see where the journal and the field continue to go from here.
Please keep in touch.
Sincerely,
Philip Maymin (
Fairfield University USA