preview

Flash Boys Corruption

Better Essays

Michael Lewis’s novel, Flash Boys, gives an in depth look at the corruption that has occurred in the U.S financial system since 2008. With a focus on high frequency trading (HFT), Lewis shows how a group can bend and twist regulations, and find loopholes in the market at the cost of the American investor. However, Lewis stresses that this this could not be done without major collusion within the financial system. HFT could not have held such a deep grasp on the market without help from the banks, their dark pools, and the people who are entrusted to run the U.S markets, the exchanges. Flash Boys shows, through the stories of Brad Katsuyama, Sergey Aleynikov, and everyone who helped create IEX, that there are solutions to these criminal acts …show more content…

Not only could he not be sure that the exchange would be a success, but he also had to somehow convince the brightest minds on Wall Street that this was this was so important it was worth it even though they would be giving up guaranteed money working for the firms who were doing this. To finance the exchange Brad would only take money from people he knew could afford it. This is where Brad’s years of being a trustworthy and honest was paying off and he was able to get money to start the exchange, IEX (the Investors Exchange). Brad brought in Dan Aisen (Puz), winner of the “Microsoft Puzzle Challenge” (Hence the name Puz) and put him in charge of finding any vulnerability that may have been overlooked while creating the exchange. Puz thought like the people who would attempt to take advantage of the exchange and was in charge of making sure that didn’t occur. They then brought in Zoran, who once ran NSADAQ operations, and asked him to run the exchange. With a team full morally strong, bright people, Brad began talking to investors and selling the exchange to investors. Wall Street despised IEX because everyone began to understand that this fully transparent exchange would make the front funning of HFT next to impossible. This is where the reader could fully understand that it wasn’t just the HFT that were under scrutiny throughout the book. Exchanges didn’t like IEX because HFT had allowed their profits to skyrocket. Banks devoted millions of dollars to HFT technology and strategies and produced immense revenue in kickbacks. IEX deterred this activity. On December 19th, 2013, Brad was able to get Goldman Sachs to places a large amount of order IEX and the exchange took off from there. “If Goldman Sachs was willing to acknowledge to investors that this new market was the best chance for fairness and stability, the other banks would be pressured to follow...the harder it would be for the banks to evade

Get Access