The book generated a lot of interest in the media circles about High Frequency Trading- a partial reason that made me read this one; and the other reason being that I am consuming books with a sign of Wall Street in it.Let us assume that the lion has just killed the deer and is about to relish the the first bite, before which the vulture swoops in to take the rest of the carcass. HFT are those vultures who are powered by high speed connections (we are talking about microseconds here) and better algorithms.
Flash Boys is well structured and begins with how the characters first notice their inability to trade the shares available in the market and not able to trade at the price that the ticker shows on their screens; how they dig deep and uncover the mask of HFT and then their efforts to build an extremely complex man-made ecosystem -Stock exchange, to defeat it. Throughout the book the author,a critic of HFT, shows us ways on how HFT were beating the system without losing the interest of the reader with all the jargon involved in it.
The author makes a great effort to bring simple parallels that makes easier for the reader to understand without getting lost in the quagmire. An odd spoke in the wheel is the story of Sergey Aleynikov - a former GS programmer who was wrongly convicted, shows up in the end for no discernable reason.
Going by the news, it didn't have any major upheaval on Wall Street. HFT are exploiting the loopholes in the system, not committing any felony which makes me wonder why the author is such a vocal critic for them. All in all, a decent one time read. The author though fails to bring out the drama and urgency that is usually in the menu of any Wall St related writings.
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