Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis

Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis, 271 pages.

Lewis's latest look at Wall Street covers the post-2008 crash phenomenon of High Frequency Trading (HFT). The author was surprised to learn that many of the biggest banks and big trading companies allowed HFT firms to have access to their in-house "dark pools," and allowed those same firms to have the fastest fiber connections into and between their exchanges. This allowed the very smart, very high-tech HFT firms to have microsecond or nanosecond advance knowledge of big trades, giving them and their high-speed computers time to get ahead of the trade and make a fraction of a cent or so on every share traded. The author estimates that on each of the strategies that were discovered by the traders who gave him the info for the book, the HFT folk made at least a billion dollars per year. Interesting stuff. One of those eminently accessible works of nonfiction that has the pacing and plotting of a good solid novel, though that's no surprise since readable quick-paced nonfic is a specialty of Lewis.

Check our catalog.