Michie's machine, which was called the Matchbox Educable Nought and Crosses Engine - or MENACE for short - used matchboxes to represent all 304 states of play in the game of tic-tac-toe, with each small box containing beads to mark the relative advantages of each position.
Like Michie's machine, Wallace maps out scenarios to pick out those that are most successful and then reinforce those winning strategies. But unlike Michie's matchbox engine, Wallace operates in the complex world of financial markets, where the parameters are always shifting.
Valois Franklin explains that Wallace looks at markets "like a flock of birds, that's constantly shifting and morphing," to pick up on signs of early movements driven by insider knowledge.
"As soon as individual securities start to fly away from the flock, that's one signal to Wallace that says, 'Zero in on this, why is this security behaving more independently versus its peers.' And often independence of behavior is indicative of knowledge that's imprinted on the security. Often, when people don't really know anything, they tend to act in lockstep with others."