Professor Brian Scott-Quinn answers questions on the social value of high frequency traders on the FT.com

The Financial Times' Global Masters in Finance 2011 has ranked the ICMA Centre in the top 25 in the world. The Centre and its flagship MSc International Securities, Investment and Banking programme sits amongst the top finance schools and programmes in the world alongside the likes of Oxford, Saïd and HEC Paris.

What does yoga meditation have to do with the late Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple and one of the most creative and innovative entrepreneurs of our time? Before his passing in 2011 he made arrangements that all those attending his memorial service at Stanford University should receive a copy of “Autobiography of a Yogi” by Paramahansa Yogananda, a spiritual classic which he said he had read once a year since he had first become acquainted with the book. “There has been nothing before, written in English or in any other European language, like this presentation of Yoga” writes Columbia University Press, while the New York Times defines it “A rare account”.

Momentum trading is a popular strategy in the commodity futures markets. The idea is simple. Suppose that an investor wants to invest in the first nearby contract of several commodity markets, e.g. crude oil, live cattle and gold. At the end of each month, the trader ranks these assets according to their past return performance, observed over a measurement period of 12 months for example, from the top performing asset to the bottom performing asset. The investor opens a long position in the first nearby of the markets that performed well and a short position in the first nearby of the markets that underperformed. These positions are held throughout the next month. This strategy has performed historically well historically and has attracted the interest of investors.