Scott Patterson

Scott Patterson (born December 29, 1969) is an American financial journalist and bestselling author. He is a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal and author of Dark Pools: High-Speed Traders, A.I. Bandits, and the Threat to the Global Financial System and The New York Times bestselling book The Quants. Journalism Patterson has as Master of Arts and English degree from James Madison University. Patterson is a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal covering government regulation of the financial industry. His coverage has included high-profile interviews with Mark Cuban, Warren Buffett, Edward Thorp and others. He has been described as the "go-to guy" for high-tech journalism, covering topics such as dark pools, flash crashes, algorithmic trading and high-frequency trading (HFT). Patterson is an active critic of high-frequency trading, citing HFT as a major cause of market volatility and preferential treatment of select firms, yet acknowledging HFT role as market makers. He is a proponent of greater government oversight on the markets, pointing out that they cannot keep up with Wall Street innovation. He names this as a cause of decreased public confidence in the markets. Patterson attributes the Flash Crash to a combination of all these issues.