Flash Boys

An eye-opening and shocking read. Sadly, though IEX still exists it appears to have created very little impact in the corrupt stock market.

For those who know the meanders of optical fiber interconnections but do not have a clue how msecs can make fortunes this is certainly an entertaining book. And we must not forget it's Michael Lewis so it is a story very well written and worth your while.

Fascinating

Great material and story about the good guys trying to fight a behemoth of a problem that's seems to be the legal version of what the dudes in office space tried to accomplish-only on the scale of the entire stock market.

How technology and mainly communication speed transformed the financial markets into something that could be exploited by smart computer program. High frequency trading and what it means to still have a conscience on Wall Street. Very interesting read.

If you ever listened to the Radiolab episode about high frequency trading, you should give this a listen. Lewis goes into much more detail on the same subject, including the concept of “dark pools” which I was unaware of. It's crazy how differeny things are from when I learned about the stock market in high school, but this one does an entertaining job of explaining why.

If you ever listened to the Radiolab episode about high frequency trading, you should give this a listen. Lewis goes into much more detail on the same subject, including the concept of “dark pools” which I was unaware of. It's crazy how differeny things are from when I learned about the stock market in high school, but this one does an entertaining job of explaining why.

Another fantastic book from Michael Lewis about the machinations of financial markets. I rate this as one of my favourite books by Lewis, up there with The Big Short and not far behind Liar's Poker. Highly recommended for anyone interested in learning about what's been going on in financial markets.

Before reading Flash Boys, I was only marginally aware of High Frequency Trading and had only a vague notion of what it was. Michael Lewis sheds a lot of light on how it works and who it benefits (hint: not you) and apparently, I wasn't the only one who was in the dark. HFT is usually portrayed as being a net win for the markets because it provides liquidity. That turns out to be far from the truth. Not only is the liquidity provided by HFT a false liquidity that benefits no one, it turns out it's just a way to take advantage of having faster access to market data to essentially skim from “normal” market activity. It's guys with faster connections and privileged access to market data taking your money when you trade while providing you zero benefit whatsoever in return.

You pretty much have to have faith that based on his reputation, Lewis is getting his facts straight since it obviously behooves the HFT traders to obfuscate what they're doing. If he's getting it right though, then there's a lot of crap going down that should shake your faith in the good intentions of majority of stock brokers. Fortunately there is a hint of optimism throughout the book and signs that things are changing, but the situation he describes so well is very much still happening today.