Intro:

In the introduction of the book They Say/I Say, the authors introduce the use of templates as a means of structuring one’s essay. The authors argue that the templates they employ allows a writer to structure an essay such that there is a clear argument. There is no simple “yes or no” answer to these arguments. They are more thought out and complex, and require a bit of thinking.

I personally feel that these templates are an excellent way to structure an essay. One of the hardest parts of writing is to create a clear and concise argument; one that cannot simply be answered using one word. The templates assist the writer in creating an argument in which he/she is stating their opinion, and analyzing the opinions of others.

Chapter 1:

In chapter one, their main point is to emphasize the focus on what others are saying. One’s argument is built on the basis of the arguments of others. Without a clear understand of what others are saying, our own argument will not make sense and fall apart.

“Instead of opening with someone else’s views, you could start with an illustrative quotation, a revealing fact or statistic, or a relevant anecdote.” (pg. 20)

“Remember that you are entering a conversation and therefore need to start with ‘what others are saying’ and introduce your own ideas as a response.” (pg. 18)

“To keep an audience engaged, a writer needs to explain what he or she is responding to either before offering that response or, at least, very early in the discussion.” (pg. 17)

Question: How do you effectively explain to the reader what we are responding to, without giving away our entire paper? (Essentially, making it pointless for the reader to continue)

Instead of opening with someone else’s views, you could start with an illustrative quotation , a revealing fact or statistic, or— as we do in this chapter— a relevant anecdote.

Graff, Gerald; Birkenstein, Cathy (2007-08-17). “They Say / I Say”: The Moves that Matter in Persuasive Writing (p. 20). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Instead of opening with someone else’s views, you could start with an illustrative quotation , a revealing fact or statistic, or— as we do in this chapter— a relevant anecdote.

Graff, Gerald; Birkenstein, Cathy (2007-08-17). “They Say / I Say”: The Moves that Matter in Persuasive Writing (p. 20). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Instead of opening with someone else’s views, you could start with an illustrative quotation , a revealing fact or statistic, or— as we do in this chapter— a relevant anecdote.

Graff, Gerald; Birkenstein, Cathy (2007-08-17). “They Say / I Say”: The Moves that Matter in Persuasive Writing (p. 20). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

What comes to mind when I think of “revising” my writing, is completely doing my paper over. I remember in my senior year of high school, I had to revise a comparative analysis. The process was extremely arduous. I ended up rewriting the entire paper. Although the process was a huge pain, the paper did turn out very well. Revising is changing anything that needs to be changed in terms of context. Editing is more focused on grammatical changes. Proofreading is going through the paper after both have been done to ensure that there are no more mistakes. I completely agree with Brock Dethier, mainly because I can relate to his writing. I dread revising papers. Like number 7 under “Resistance to Revision”, I “don’t have time to revise”. That is the main reason for my negative attitude towards revision. I feel that it takes way too long to revise my papers.

I completed my zero draft for the assignment on Monday, and will now pursue in creating a draft. I’ve spent quite a bit of time on the assignment, mainly re-reading my articles. I’ve listed the rhetorical tools that both articles use, how they use it, and how it affect the way the articles are interpreted. I’ve also spent some time creating an outline, thinking about how I want to structure the paper. After giving it much thought, I finally found out how I am going to approach the piece. It is going to be interesting to see how it will come out, since the audience in mind are now professionals in the industry. My biggest struggle is not that I can’t write like the professionals; in fact, I can write just like them. The struggle is going to come from placing footnotes to define terms that are not familiar to the average person.

1) Chilton, Bart. “No Need to Demonize High-Frequency Trading.” DealBook No Need to Demonize HighFrequency Trading Comments. New York Times, 7 July 2014. Web. 05 Oct. 2014.

In his article, Chilton argues that high-frequency trading has been beneficial to the markets, as opposed to some of the commonly seen articles. Words such as “predatory” and “toxic” have been used to describe the practice. Many have been so focused on the negatives that they never stopped to look at the positive effects. Some of the positive effects include increased liquidity, smaller bid-ask spreads, and a decrease in volatility.

2) Lewis, Michael. “The Wolf Hunters of Wall Street.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 31 Mar. 2014. Web. 05 Oct. 2014.

Brad Katsuyama worked at RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) during the time of the crash. RBC wasn’t even on Wall Street’s map at the time. They were certainly a big player, but not in the CDO business. At RBC, Katsuyama, a trader, saw that when he entered his orders, they would not always go through. It happened repeatedly. At first, he thought it was just RBC’s systems. But, after talking to many of his trader friends from different firm, he found that they were having the same problem too. After a lot of research, he found that there were people running ahead of his orders. They were executing their orders faster than he can.

3)Patterson, Scott. “High-Frequency Trader Charged With Market Manipulation.” The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, 2 Oct. 2014. Web. 05 Oct. 2014.

The first high-frequency trader has been charged under the provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act. The Act has been trying to crack down on illegitimate trading practices after the market crash of 2008. Michael Coscia was charged for “spoofing”. Spoofing is the practice of creating trading algorithms that would initiate a trade, and the trade a fraction of a second later, to move the market in his favor. He was charged on six counts of spoofing, each with a consequence of up to 25 years in prison a $250,000 fine.

4) Rotbult, Charles. “How Does High-Frequency Trading Affect Individual Investors?” The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, 19 Aug. 2014. Web. 05 Oct. 2014.

Many individual investors tend to think that high-frequency trading has a profound impact on them. In fact, for most, investors, high frequency trading is irrelevant to them. They should not view HFT as a problem, but rather as a solution. HFT has significantly improved market making, thus creating more liquidity. To much surprise, HFT has, in some ways, increased the profitability of investors. It has decreased the spread between the bid-ask spread, allowing the individual investor to buy and sell at a much closer price.