Book Review of "Flash Boys"

“Every systemic market injustice arose from some loophole in a regulation created to correct some prior injustice.”

Being a fan of Michale Lewis’s past work, mainly “The Big Short” and “Moneyball”, I had super high expectations from the “Flash Boys” - a book about anything and everything HFT (High Frequency Trading). Unfortunately, though, the book is simply put - just all over the place.

It starts out taking a technical look at the fascinating world of High Frequency Trading but then stops short from getting into the real meat of the details and prefers to just be handwavy about it. It then embarks into portraying backstories and motivations of some of its characters (which are, by the way, all real people from the world of HFT) but then suddenly changes gears to go back to talking about HFT. I think the book has a serious identity crisis - it wants to be technical about HFT but not really, it wants to paint interesting character portraits but then prefers not to do it to completion.

Despite all of this, it’s an engaging read. On one hand, the sheer technological feat of running HFT at scale is fascinating but on the other hand, the monumentally immoral way in which it is being used - leaves one speechless. The “Flash Boys” gives an excellent peek into the inner workings of a stock exchange and interesting details around the IEX vs NYSE vs Nasdaq spiel. A fair 3.5/5 from me.