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4.03 AVERAGE
4.03 AVERAGE
Required reading for class. Cool to see Canadians feature so prominently in a fundamentally Usonian Wall Street story. As much as I enjoy a Little Guy standing up to Big Corporatism, the IEX thread just didn't feel very compelling. Aleynikov's story was interesting from the perspective of a developer, but the little things just get to you. Nobody is putting passwords in their .bash_history! We've had HISTCONTROL=ignorespace since bash v1.05 in 1990.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
informative
medium-paced
Michael Lewis tells great stories. I've learned to love his style: focusing on the personal lives and ambitions of some (real) central players in a phenomenon, in this case the revolt against high-frequency trading in the US stock market. Not that I've ever been very interested in the market, but he tells compelling stories. His protagonists always come across as heroes, regardless of their social awkwardness or desire to make money (some come across as uninterested; others clearly want to profit). In this case, he profiles the founders of IEX, a new exchange in 2013 that coiled fiber optic cable to even-out information spread and thwart HFTs from taking advantage of their customers. The broader market's still rigged, but this book and the banks' and regulators' reactions to it give me hope.
challenging
informative
medium-paced
No one has fueled my disdain for capitalism and our current financial systems than Michael Lewis. Flash Boys gives us a close look at high frequency trading and the bad behavior of big banks in a very compelling narrative. But it also gives us some hope in the character of Brad Katsuyama. The world needs more people like him.
informative
medium-paced
disturbing read -- it is hard to have any trust in the financial sector, which is bad! The narrative based on people is probably necessary, but also limited the scope. The inability to _really_ name-names is a bit of a bummer.