Flash Boys

Written by Michael Lewis

Narrated by Dylan Baker

2015 Audie Award Finalist for Nonfiction

From the #1 bestselling author of The Blind Side and Moneyball

Four years after his #1 bestseller The Big Short, Michael Lewis returns to Wall Street to report on a high-tech predator stalking the equity markets.

Flash Boys is about a small group of Wall Street guys who figure out that the US stock market has been rigged for the benefit of insiders and that, post-financial crisis, the markets have become not more free but less, and more controlled by the big Wall Street banks. Working at different firms, they come to this realization separately; but after they discover each other, the flash boys band together and set out to reform the financial markets. This they do by creating an exchange in which high-frequency trading—source of the most intractable problems—will have no advantage whatsoever.

The characters in Flash Boys are fabulous, each completely different from what you think of when you think “Wall Street guy.” Several have walked away from jobs in the financial sector that paid them millions of dollars a year. From their new vantage point they investigate the big banks, the world’s stock exchanges, and high-frequency trading firms as they have never been investigated, and expose the many strange new ways that Wall Street generates profits.

The light that Lewis shines into the darkest corners of the financial world may not be good for your blood pressure, because if you have any contact with the market, even a retirement account, this story is happening to you. But in the end, Flash Boys is an uplifting story. Here are people who have somehow preserved a moral sense in an environment where you don’t get paid for that; they have perceived an institutionalized injustice and are willing to go to war to fix it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Mar 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781442370289

Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis is the host of the podcast Against the Rules. He has published many New York Times bestselling books, including Liar's Poker, The Fifth Risk, Flash Boys, and The Big Short. Movie versions of The Big Short, Moneyball, and The Blind Side were all nominated for Academy Awards. He grew up in New Orleans and remains deeply interested and involved in the city but now lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, Tabitha Soren, and their children.

Reviews for Flash Boys

[Michael Neeper · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I’ll read anything by Michael Lewis. This was a informative and scary book about the HFT world and I’m glad I understand more about the world of high frequency trading

[karl schmidt · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Well written and well read. Probably more enjoyable for those with a wall street background to appreciate nuance and technical discussion although both are nicely addressed through analogies.

[zoneseek-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lewis writes very entertaining nonfic, I loved the Ronan character and laughed out loud a few times. But it does feel a bit like the first half of a really good book, which ok is still really good, but incomplete. Lewis says in the Acknowledgements that he spoke to HFT insiders off the record, but that's what's missing, pull back the curtain and let's take a good hard look inside an HFT shop that makes billions and never has a losing day in 5 years, with CIA-grade opsec that takes five badge swipes to get into. Overall great stuff, high-frequency trading is something I'll want to read more on.

I loved the cliffhanger ergodic bit at the end where Lewis leaves it up to you to Google the FCC license number off a microwave tower.

[pcorrigan_18 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A lot of books are written. This one is just plain worth reading. If only to gain the slightest insight into the phenomenal greed at the heart of capitalism. Mind you, I am not saying there is something so much better out there, at least they don't organize the elimination (literally) of their enemies. And yet amidst the utter squalor of these financial leeches he finds his heroes and you come away with a small bit of hope. Brad Katsuyama, Sergey Aleynikov, Ryan Ronan, these are literally the heroes and if they didn't win at least they weren't crushed. Especially Sergey, bravo my man!

[bangerlm · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this book a lot. I like how Michael Lewis can make a non-fiction book read like a Grisham thriller, though I did find it a bit repetitive in the middle. The one aspect of the story I was left wondering was who were the initial HFT who figured out how to game the system before the Wall Street banks got involved? Were they already obscenely wealthy Wall Street elites? Were they "new" guys? Or were they programmers who had been consistently taken advantage?

[creighley_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A look at the wheeling and dealing of Wall Street.

[library_lin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I know next to nothing about trading and finance. And whenever anyone tries to explain it to me, my eyes won’t focus. So, I was hesitant to pick up this book. But, while a few passages explaining what went wrong with the stock markets around 2006 were a bit confusing for me, the book’s substance was completely understandable. Michael Lewis looks at the human side of his story in addition to the numbers. The people who stood up against the big investment banks with their dark pools used to hide how they ripped off their investors kept me, by turns, infuriated and amazed. That these people were smart enough and cared enough to beat the system and do the right thing was inspiring. The book outlines a modern-day David and Goliath tale that made me feel that, despite rampant greed and corruption, there may be hope for us after all.

[akbouterse · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a pretty interesting book. I'm not sure I understand High Efficiency trading, or whatever it's called (my dad, who works for a bank, kept trying to explain it to me) but this book was till easy to read. I like Lewis' writing style. He handles complex topics very well and makes it understandable to a lay audience. I'm also reading Moneyball by him right now and while I'm liking that one more, this one was still quite good. This book did a lot of jumping around that I didn't always love and was sometimes hard to follow when listening to the audio book. I also listened over a shorter period of time so remembering who everyone was was hard. I would recommend this book to people still, even if they know very little about wall street.

[reenum_4 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I usually love Lewis's books, but this one started to drag. The extensive explanations of how data has to travel and the esoteric details of laying fiber optic cable were not enough to hold my interest. A rare miss.

[pdcread · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The days of men in the bear pit screaming prices at each other are long gone in the stock markets, now days it is all controlled by computers. These are so valuable that they are hidden well away and guarded by heavily armed men, and not even the experts know exactly what happens in these dark pools.

Those that do know won’t tell either, as they are making an absolute fortune.

This market, that we have been assured is open and fair, is rigged. And the key that unlocks the money chest now is speed. These days when you place and order for shares it is transmitted to an exchange so you can carry out the transactions. Whilst this is really fast, there are guys called high frequency traders who see your order, and with their super fast networks buy the shares first before offering them to you for a few pennies more. They have almost no risk as they have a guaranteed buyer. All because their connection is that few seconds faster.

One man, Brad Katsuyama, sees this happening and decides to do something to try and make the markets fair once again. With and eclectic bunch of financial oddballs and misfits, he sets up his own exchange, IDX, that is not only transparent, but also has a declared set of rules. Lewis writes about the fight that he went through to become accepted in Wall Street, how banks still refused to trade with them, even when explicitly told to do so by their customers as they couldn’t take a cut from their high frequency traders.

Lewis does have a way of getting complex financial shenanigans across, and in this book he has a good go at it. But there is masses of technical jargon in here, and that does get in the way of the story of Katsuyama’s fight to have an open and equal market once again. It was worth reading though, just to see how rigged and corrupt the world financial markets are.

[foof2you · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

How well intentioned regulations, coming after the 2008 financial meltdown, caused a scam on Wall Street where people paid million to game the system and make millions with little at stake. What happened screwed regular investors and cost millions of dollars to them.

[hhornblower_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

All I can say is Michael Lewis has a lot of talent in making what is a rather dry subject into an exciting page turner. This book just flowed! It also renewed by disgust in what our country and the modern world economy has become.

[aront-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'll start with my criticisms, which are mostly stylistic.It seems that Lewis decided to write a book about the story of Goldman Sachs programmer Aleynikov, accused of stealing code. When he realized that wasn't book length material, plus the latter was writing his own memoir, he pivoted to the story of the IEX exchange, founded to fight the ills of high-frequency trading (HFT) and lack of transparency on Wall Street. Lewis had to make a valiant effort to glue these two separate together, which added more padding. Even so, he had to add even more padding, because the IEX story also isn't book length. So he repeats his explanations of the evils of HFT over and over and over....Nonetheless, the book is short enough, the topic important enough, the people and story are interesting enough, and Lewis is a good enough writer to make this book well worth the read. Lot's of people (particularly from the finance industry) have all kinds of other criticisms, which I'm sure you will find in other reviews):1. Lewis over-simplifies or distorts in his explanation of HFT2. His need to portray the story as good vs evil further over simplifies a complex topic3. Wall Street serves a useful purpose and books like these will lead to more useless regulation of a vital industrySince I am neither an economist nor a Wall Street expert, I can't fully judge the validity of the first criticism. But there is enough evidence to show that the gist of Lewis' accusations are totally accurate. A truly free market, in the Adam Smith sense of that institution, requires a free flow of information to all participants. Wall Street banks in general, and HFT traders in particular, make every effort possible to restrict access to information and to game this proprietary information to generate unproductive rent. As to the second criticism, while the rent-seeking of the banks and HFT traders isn't necessarily "evil," it is certainly harmful to the overall productivity of the economy. Moreover, given that economies are inherently unstable, the added instability of HFT is NOT a good thing. This is the gist of the book's criticism of HFT. By contrast, IEX' aim is to create transparency in the markets, which every person who thinks capitalism is a good system should support unconditionally. That IEX and its founders are the heroes of the book, actually directly undermines the third criticism: Lewis is specifically advocating a market solution (IEX) to the problem, not more regulation (which he points out often makes the problem worse). While heavily critical of banks and the SEC, this book is hardly a Marxist tract.So ignore the criticisms of people who make money off our ignorance, and read this book!

[abycats_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book explains the impact of high frequency trading and its distortion of the stock market by following the detective work of a small bank of geniuses brought together by the Royal Bank of Canada. While the description certainly made me more despairing than ever about the place of small investors in today's market, I was also thoroughly impressed by the lucid way in which author Michael Lewis explains what happened, why, and whether there's any possible cure. Eye opening for those interested. Also a good read.

[nicdevera-16450 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lewis writes very entertaining nonfic, I loved the Ronan character and laughed out loud a few times. But it does feel a bit like the first half of a really good book, which ok is still really good, but incomplete. Lewis says in the Acknowledgements that he spoke to HFT insiders off the record, but that's what's missing, pull back the curtain and let's take a good hard look inside an HFT shop that makes billions and never has a losing day in 5 years, with CIA-grade opsec that takes five badge swipes to get into. Overall great stuff, high-frequency trading is something I'll want to read more on.

I loved the cliffhanger ergodic bit at the end where Lewis leaves it up to you to Google the FCC license number off a microwave tower.

[rgaryrasmussen · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Writing this review in September 2016, the abusive practices of some big Wall Street banks and, it seems, many high frequency trading companies is no longer news. But it was to me. And I'm both appalled and outraged, if not completely surprised.My only quibble is that the story seems unfinished. Wish I could know that the abuse is over, the guilty are all in prison, and the regulators are doing their job.Many thanks to the author for opening my eyes! Thanks too to Brad for his courage and honesty.

[manishch-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting read in typical Michael Lewis style of slightly sensational reporting. There are clear good guys and bad guys. His conclusion seems very logical and reasonable, but I've read a number of articles after reading this book which paint his perspective as a biased one.

[emresevinc · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Prior to this book, my knowledge about HFT (High Frequency Trading) was limited to a few technical articles I read in Communications of ACM magazine a few years ago, and they were all focused mostly on the technological aspects of it. As a software engineer and mathematician, I remember myself being fascinated by the effort spent on optimizing software and hardware systems dedicated to high speed trading. I also vaguely remember from those articles, how it became important to be physically close to the data centers of the stock exchanges. But for me, that was all there is to it, financial world, being financial world as usual. My attitude was, in a sense, closer to the type of programmers described in the book, the ones who were fascinated by solving technical challenges, yet didn't know or care about the bigger picture, didn't know what kind of business they were serving, how their technological systems were reshaping the financial markets as we know it.I had no idea how deep and systemic the whole institution of HFT went before reading this book, and now I have a much better idea about this fast paced world, where regulation after regulation, the loopholes are discovered, and very intelligent people go to greatests lengths to milk the existing structure to the extent permitted by laws of physics. Whether this serves the greater good, is a highly contested question as the book demonstrates remarkably well. Most of the times, the book is a page-turner, it almost reads like a high quality, adrenaline and technology filled science fiction by Neal Stephenson (except where it becomes so wordy and dumbed-down, e.g. when it gives the definitions of 'millisecond', 'microsecond', making me wonder whether the book's target audience includes primary school students, too).Readers with a similar background will probably be disappointed by a visible lack of technical details when the technological aspects of HFT are described in the book; I for one, can't be sure whether this is caused by concerns such as "let's not scare the average US reader", or something totally different, such as "let's not get into much technical and accurate details, otherwise we might get sued by some financial giants in no time" (if it's the latter, then I'd be more understanding). I have no idea how actual investors, fund managers, traders, and bank managers would think after reading book, it would enrich my experience of the book for sure.I've also appreciated the very brief references to the two types of programmers: one who doesn't have much clue how his work contributes to the overal business, the bottom line, and therefore gets a very good, but not so great salary versus the programmer who knows how that software is critical to the bottom line, and therefore gets paid many times his peer. And how business people, finance executives in this case, did their best to keep their technology experts in the dark with regards to such aspects of the business. What I did not appreciate was the stereotypical descriptions of "socially awkward geniuses, nerds, geeks, programmers" because, seriously, it is 2016, and it started to get boring: the lonely genius who's into coding, avoiding people, happy with managing software wizardry, and all that stuff. The world needs a more nuanced look at such people, with a lot less clichés.Long story short, if you want to have a clue about how modern HFT got started, how it was able to exploit aspects of stock exchanges, how big banks contributed to this, how the 'fairness' of the market was a shaky concept, you owe yourself to read this book, and learn more about the subject. You will also have the opportunity to learn about a few interesting people, who would make great movie characters, in their quest to right some wrongs, and create a fair market, struggling against the biggest and sharpest players in the financial world.

[stephengoldenberg · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Ever since the financial crash of 2008, I've tried to read any books that would help me understand what happened and explain why and how a largely unregulated financial industry could crash our economies again if we let things carry on. The problem is that I find even the best written books (and that certainly includes those by Michael Lewis such as The Big Short) hard to get my head round. I just about understand how subprime mortgages and other bad debts were bundled together in packages by companies like Goldman Sachs, then sold on to other companies after which Goldman takes out insurance against them failing to be repaid - a win win situation for the bankers while ordinary debtors and investors have their lives destroyed.
Much of this book is even harder to understand, dealing as it does with nerdy High Frequency Traders who rip off ordinary investors by creating computer systems that trade faster than everybody else (we're talking milliseconds) thereby scalping vast sums of money off these deals. In books like this, I tend to latch on to sections, or anecdotes, which seem to sum up what's going on in simple terms. Here, it was the point where Brad, the hero of the book, tries to set up his own stock exchange that will protect investors from being ripped off by HFTs. When he meets big banks and investment companies seeking financial backing, they ask him why he is doing it. When he answers that it's because he wants to bring justice and fairness to the industry, they are immediately suspicious and won't back him. So he changes his story. Instead, he tells them he's doing it because he thinks it will make him lots of money. Now they are supportive. A perfect illustration of he basic moral - self-serving greed is all!

[yvonne.sevignykaiser · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

52 Books 52 Weeks (Week 15 for 2014)

Fascinating look at hyper trading in the stock market. How it was accomplished quietly behind the scenes.

[darwa-3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

this book has been in the news constantly this week and it has been extremely interesting reading the biased responses from all involved parties.
Everyone who owns stock at any level should read this book!

[bravenewbks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Solid 3.5 stars. As usual, Michael Lewis excels at taking an extremely complex and esoteric subject and making me feel like I understand it. But somehow this one didn't ring as true or as disinterested as some of his other books -- it felt like a book full of glowing accolades about the character of Brad Katsuyama, an employee of the Royal Bank of Canada who apparently left a multi-million dollar salary to create his own stock market (the IEX) for the sole purpose of being fairer to investors. Throughout the book, Katsuyama is portrayed as relentlessly selfless and unselfish; he's practically a Christlike figure. Because he never had a single flaw, I found the portrait unconvincing, and that ultimately led me to wonder what else Lewis might be whitewashing.

[jonarnold_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I’ve worked my way through the films of David Lynch, read a fair chunk of Stephen King, watched the creepier moments of The X-Files and even, for real horror, kept watching the nightly news. But nothing’s quite as disturbing as Michael Lewis’s books about the world of high finance. Because his books confirm that the history of Wall Street (and other financial institutions) tell you things aren’t as bad as you thought. They’re worse. And Lewis is such a good writer, with a gift for clarifying complex concepts and finding a story of hope at the heart of darkness, that he can sweep all the smoke and mirrors which have hidden that fact away.The story at the heart of the book is one about the search speed from investment banks and stock exchanges, to be able to trade on the market in microseconds, milliseconds and nanoseconds. Without a human angle it’d be an arid tale, even with the angle of high frequency traders using the speeds of signal between different exchanges to rig the market and make vast profits for adding no real value. The hero of the book is Brad Katsuyama, who at times appears to be the only honest broker and who figures out how high frequency traders (HFTs) make their profit. He’s the underdog hero of so many of Lewis’s books, the insider who figures out the system’s corrupt and, eventually, how to at least ameliorate that corruption. It follows him through an Ocean’s 11 ‘getting a gang together’ story, which uses team members he assembles to explore aspects of the collision between Wall Street and technology that’s occurred through the last decade. This is half the secret of Lewis’s excellence; his ability to explain aspects of the situation by putting human faces on them (the other half being that, as an ex-insider, he understands the markets and their language). For much of the book it’s a disheartening journey through the more venal aspects of human nature; how investment banks and stock markets were affected by technology; how the history of Wall Street is simply one of being one step ahead of the regulators; how banks and markets exploited new technology and regulations, then exploited programmers and coders, and how the only Goldman Sachs employee jailed after the financial crash was arrested for a common practice of emailing essentially valueless code to himself. Lewis lays out the importance of even nanoseconds in the HFT strategy of exploiting investors, how even in the digital era physical location had become vital. He explains clearly and concisely how the exploitation of traders developed through a combination of ‘dark pools’ (essentially trades conducted opaquely in a closed market within a bank itself) and orders sent by traders reaching different exchanges at different speeds thanks to their hardware and location. Lewis follows Katsuyama from the realisation of this to his creation of a new, fairer stock market designed to protect investors. It’s at times one man (well, several men eventually) against a system invested in institutional corruption and there are times you marvel – their throwing in six figure jobs for low-paying jobs to create this new exchange for example. Tellingly, when selling the concept of a new exchange Katsuyama has to sell it to investors at ‘long-term greedy’ rather than, as conceived, essentially altruistic. Wall Street does not understand altruism, except to exploit it. Flash Boys is ultimately compelling because it sounds a note of hope; not all bankers are greedy, not all markets can be rigged. But it’s clear that whatever the victory won, it’s only a temporary one. Human nature, particularly where money is to be made, means people and institutions will seek and find loopholes and exploit them. And there won’t always be Katsuyamas around to realise what going on and be motivated to speak out. As with Moneyball, The Blind Side and The Big Short it’s a heartening underdog tale but, assuming stock markets still exist in a century, the Michael Lewis of that era is almost certainly going to be writing a similar story. It’s human nature, unchanging and eternal in an ephemeral world. And human nature, as here, is the most uplifting and terrifying element in existence.

[davidwylie_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Probably the most disappointing Michael Lewis yet. Rather, the only disappointing Michael Lewis yet. The con is explained in 20 pages and repeated over and over to make a book. Credit due for shedding light on the nefarious practices of HFT firms but this would have worked better as a long form article.

[othemts · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book focuses on the contemporary financial trading practices of high frequency traders or "flash traders" seeking to gain advantage in fractions of seconds by having more direct cable connections to the markets. This is emphasized by an effort to lay a cable from to New York to Chicago through the mountains of Pennsylvania as directly as possible. Many financial intermediaries are taking advantage of the high frequency trading to basically rip-off their customers and by proxy making the whole financial system susceptible to collapse. The heroes of the book are the quirky iconoclasts who create the Investors Exchanges (IEX) to counteract this effect. Lewis can get bogged down in technical details and traders' talk at times, but mostly keeps things moving along to be entertaining and informative

[agnejakubauskaite · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

WHAT IS IT ABOUT?“Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt” by Michael Lewis is both an infuriating and uplifting true story about the U.S. stock market corruption in the twenty-first century and a handful of extraordinary individuals who, instead of benefiting from the rigged system like everyone else on the Wall Street, are willing to go to war to fix it. Inspired by an obscure trial of Russian computer programmer Sergey Aleynikov who worked for Goldman Sachs, Lewis investigates the shadiest corners of the U.S. financial world - a secret fiber-optic cable route, high-frequency trading, front-running and dark pools - all the while weaving an inspiring tale of brilliance, dedication and morality.THUMBS UP:1) Illuminating.The importance of the “Flash Boys” cannot be emphasized enough as Lewis sheds some light on the issues of the U.S. financial world that are affecting millions of people but have been known and understood by only a few. What is more, the author not only points out the problem and the culprit but he also offers an effective solution and a glimpse to a promising future.2) Well-explained.Concepts discussed in the “Flash Boys” are technical and quite complex; however, Lewis explains most of the things very clearly and uses a lot of illustrative examples so that even the readers without any previous knowledge of or interest in the stock market (yup, that’s me!) can understand and appreciate the book.3) Compelling.Who would have thought that a business book can also be quite entertaining and full of colorful characters? The protagonists in “Flash Boys” are nothing short of the Avengers: each of them is a genius in his own way and all together they make one heck of a team. Thanks to Lewis’s skillful narration, the characters seem genuine and easily relatable, and their stories are personal and very engaging (I especially loved the chapters on Aleynikov).COULD BE BETTER:1) Too long.Although “Flash Boys” is an engaging read and its message is extremely important, it clearly has too many pages as the second half of the book is a little bit repetitive and the story starts to drag.2) Complicated.Sometimes I would be confident that I got the concept right, and then a couple of pages later the author would use different words to describe the same thing throwing me off completely. Admittedly, the subject is complex; thus, reading “Flash Boys” requires your full attention to keep all the facts straight.3) Disappointing epilogue.It’s a shame to end such an important story with such a weak and vague epilogue. It is neither a satisfying summary nor a clear future direction; it’s not even a worthy chapter on its own, let alone a proper ending of the book. If you have a chance, read “Flash Boys” in a paperback because the paperback edition, unlike the hardcover, has a GREAT afterword that shows the impact this book had after its publication. Honestly, the afterword makes the whole book better.VERDICT: 3.5 out of 5“Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt” by Michael Lewis is a game-changing business book containing engaging stories and compelling characters. Despite the complexity of the subject, most of the concepts are well-explained (though it could have been done in less pages) and the new afterword in the paperback edition more than makes up for the vague and unsatisfying epilogue.

[martinbodek · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I continue to be fascinated by the market events surrounding the subprime mortgage crisis - mostly because I feel it's important to know the details, in the face of having difficulty grasping them, despite my efforts. My own comprehension inability motivates me to understand it better. I believe no one has done a better job of chronicling Wall Street's shenanigans and foibles - while making it interesting - than Michael Lewis. He's written - and I've read - many books on the leadup itself, the culture in general, and doomsday. I was curious to know about what's been happening inside the market in the aftermath, so I dispatched him to do the research, to which he agreed, and produced this gem. It begins with a mystery to be unraveled, and continues with a fascinating dissection of truly interesting personalities, driven by the thirst to know, rather than by the reaping of profit. That's what makes this book a winner. Enveloped in the details is this demanding thirst to understand, with which I identify. The details of how the market works were lost on me often, but the Flash Boys obsessiveness with unwrapping the enigma held me rapt. For a flourish, Lewis ends the book by showing that there is yet another mystery that needs unraveling. I've never salivated so much for a sequel.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I used to think I had a fair understanding of the ways of money and banking mechanisms (I was, after all a tax inspector for several years, and then helped to design tax efficient investment packages). This book did, however, swiftly disabuse me of that delusion, and Michael Lewis has pulled off a major coup by making his expose of the machinations of the Wall Street brokers, and in particular the High Frequency Traders, simultaneously very informative and entertaining.His account describes in detail the quest on Wall Street during the opening years of the current decade to cut down the length of time lost to broking houses communicating with the traders. Even a few milliseconds proved significant, the Royal Bank of Canada discovered, as this allowed rogue traders to get ahead of proposed transactions and manipulate prices to their advantage. The book details the investigations led by the RBC to discover how this was happening, and then how to eradicate it.In an America reeling from the financial crash of 2008 it might have seemed difficult to imagine how investment bankers might further damage their already low reputation. The exposure of this story did, however, manage to achieve that without too much trouble.Lewis takes the reader through some very technical material, both relating to the intricacies of high finance and the computer software and hardware that enabled the shenanigans, but he makes every step clear and lets the story unfold at its own pace.

[kukulaj · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When I was in college I was a bit fascinated by fancy wines. On a trip back home, I was browsing around in a wine store and noticed a bottle of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, 1968, for a very reasonable price, perhaps $12 or in that zone. I then visited another shop run by the same people, and got to chatting with the guy behind the counter. He said that it would be impossible to buy a Lafite-Rothschild for anything below maybe $100. I said, hey, no, you have a bottle for sale in your other store for only $12!I then went back home and told my Dad the whole story. He practically screamed at me: "You told them the price at the other store???" Despite the risk, we got back in the car and raced to the first store. Ach, that bottle had been marked up to $40! But we bought it anyway with great anticipation. We opened it up for dinner that night. Ah, it turns out that the vintage tables for Bordeaux wines are reasonably accurate and definitely worth consulting! We learned what a "disastrous" vintage is all about. Vinegar!But I also got to learn about front-running and market dynamics!Michael Lewis has given us a great page-turner here and a very informative and important one, too. Lesson one is that market structure matters. Every market has a structure, a set of rules and mechanisms by which buyers and sellers find each other and negotiate prices. There is the mythology of a free market, as if there were a real price that existed apart from these rules and mechanisms, and the job of the market is to discover this real price. But that is just mythology. The price is created through the rules and mechanisms of the market. The mythology has a use, though, to deflect attention from the importance of the rules - because the rule makers would rather leave hidden the great power their role gives them. Lesson two is how the exploitation of rule-making power has played out in the stock market over the last decade or so. This information is very well hidden, and Lewis lets us know that the evidence he has gathered is very fragmentary. This book is just a snapshot, one little scene in the history of finance. But it is surely a rather typical scene. It's a great way to get a glimpse of how the world works. Well, not the world, but a very important slice of it.

[rivkat_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The story of an outsider who figured out some of the ways in which big banks and high-frequency trading firms were screwing ordinary investors (e.g., your retirement account, if you have one, and mine) and did a little bit about it. Frustrating in that regulators don’t know and don’t care, and the one person who goes to jail in the book is a Goldman Sachs employee who doesn’t seem to have done anything wrong (he was just reconvicted on state charges, making the story even sadder). What’s amazing was how compartmentalized so much of this was, such that the people building the technology didn’t know what it was being used for. Here’s a quote from one: “I felt like the getaway driver .… Each time, it was like, ‘Drive faster! Drive faster!’ Then it was like, ‘Get rid of the airbags!’ Then it was, ‘Get rid of the fucking seats!’ Towards the end I’m like, ‘Excuse me, sirs, but what are you doing in the bank?’” And yet there was information if you knew where to look—people would disclose on their LinkedIn pages that they were specialists in manipulating particular exchanges, “like saying on your LinkedIn profile, ‘I have all the skills of a robber and I know this one house intimately.’” Key deals are done with no documentation—sound like anything else the banks have done recently? Although this particular story ends well, with the new exchange succeeding in getting a ton of business protecting investors, it’s hard to believe the manipulations have ended.