Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt

· W. W. Norton & Company
4.4
506 reviews
Ebook
320
Pages

About this ebook

#1 New York Times Bestseller — With a new Afterword

"Guaranteed to make blood boil." —Janet Maslin, New York Times

In Michael Lewis's game-changing bestseller, a small group of Wall Street iconoclasts realize that the U.S. stock market has been rigged for the benefit of insiders. They band together—some of them walking away from seven-figure salaries—to investigate, expose, and reform the insidious new ways that Wall Street generates profits. If you have any contact with the market, even a retirement account, this story is happening to you.

Ratings and reviews

4.4
506 reviews
Ruben Ilizarbe
November 13, 2014
The problem is that he sets up the same scheme he supposedly wants to eradicate, because an eye for an eye or some such. There's an xkcd strip about this (see Standards). This is my first Lewis book and I'm utterly disappointed, granted I've heard from others that this is far from his best work. He picked a team, sets up the scene Mission Impossible style and rides hard for them til the end...but don't worry, if you're trading, you're probably paying a stupid amount of fees through your transactions anyway.
2 people found this review helpful
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Ian Stewart
April 9, 2014
Lewis is a gifted storyteller, managing to weave a coherent narrative out of the details of an obscure subject. He also doesn't shy away from the technical details of network latency, which is refreshing for a book targeted at the mainstream. However, the story is mainly told from the point of view of Brad Katsuyama, ex-Royal Bank of Canada, and his partners, who are trying to start the Investors' Exchange, a new stock exchange free of order types meant primarily for high frequency traders. Lewis mentions in the text that this won't be the definitive history of the HFT phenomenon, and that the people at the forefront of HFT firms have limited incentives to talk about their work in any detail. Even so, this book necessarily only scratches the surface of what's going on in the stock market. At 280 pages, it's a great, quick read here in the first half of 2014, but it will surely be usurped by later writers who will draw from a larger variety of sources.
5 people found this review helpful
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Austin Salonen
June 15, 2014
Lewis only researched the side that benefitted his narrative. If you're looking for a biased, untrue view of the market, this is the book for you. He missed big time here aside from the fact that it probably sold a lot and got on many TV shows...
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About the author

Michael Lewis is the best-selling author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Blind Side, The Big Short, The Undoing Project, and The Fifth Risk. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his family.

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