Flash Boys Final Thoughts - Did Anything Actually Change on Wall Street?
So we made it. Thirteen posts covering every chapter of Flash Boys by Michael Lewis. And now the big question: did any of it matter?
Stock market
Flash Boys Epilogue - Riding the Wall Street Trail Through Pennsylvania
The book ends the way it started. With a cable buried under American soil and the people who live above it having no clue what it does.
Flash Boys Chapter 8 - The Real Trial of Sergey Aleynikov
This chapter hit me different than the rest of the book. Maybe because Sergey Aleynikov is from the former USSR, same as me. Maybe because I spent 20 years in IT and know what it feels like when non-technical people judge your work. Probably both.
Flash Boys Chapter 7 Part 2 - IEX Goes Live and Goldman Makes a Surprising Move
In Part 1 we talked about the misfits Brad recruited to build IEX. Now we get to the good stuff. They launched it. And then Goldman Sachs did something nobody expected.
Flash Boys Chapter 7 Part 1 - The Misfits Who Built a Fair Stock Exchange
Chapter 7 is called “An Army of One.” And it starts not with trading algorithms or secret cables. It starts with a guy on the subway on September 11, 2001.
Flash Boys Chapter 6 - Building IEX and the 350 Microsecond Speed Bump
Chapter 6 is where everything gets real. Brad and his team stop talking about the problem and start building the solution. They quit their jobs, raise money, hire puzzle solvers, and design a stock exchange from scratch. And the centerpiece of the whole thing is a coil of fiber optic cable stuffed inside a box the size of a shoe.
Flash Boys Chapter 5 - Sergey Aleynikov and Goldman Sachs' Secret Code
This chapter hit me personally. I’m from the former USSR myself. I know people exactly like Sergey Aleynikov. Brilliant programmers who left because the system wouldn’t let them be what they were meant to be. Reading this felt less like a book and more like a story someone told me over tea.
Flash Boys Chapter 4 - How Brad's Team Tracked Wall Street's Hidden Predators
By the end of 2010, Brad’s team had built a weapon. Thor worked. It protected investors from getting front-run by high-frequency traders. But here’s the problem. They had built a defense against an enemy they barely understood.
Flash Boys Chapter 3 - Ronan Ryan and the Telecom Secret Behind HFT
Every person I know who works in IT started from the bottom. Fixing cables, carrying equipment, dealing with angry users. Nobody hands you a corner office in tech. You earn it by touching the actual hardware. And that’s exactly why Ronan Ryan understood something that every Wall Street trader missed.
Flash Boys Chapter 2 - Brad Katsuyama and the Phantom Stock Market Problem
Chapter 2 of Flash Boys is where we meet Brad Katsuyama. And honestly, this is where the book really starts cooking. Because Brad is not some Wall Street hotshot from Goldman Sachs. He’s a Canadian guy from Toronto who ended up in New York almost by accident.
Flash Boys Chapter 1 - The Secret Fiber Optic Cable That Changed Wall Street
Chapter 1 of Flash Boys opens like a heist movie. Two thousand workers are digging across America. They don’t know why. They don’t know what they are building. And they are told to keep their mouths shut.
Flash Boys Introduction - Windows on the World and How Wall Street Changed Forever
Michael Lewis starts “Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt” with one of the best ironies I’ve seen in a finance book. After the 2008 financial crisis, after everything Goldman Sachs did, the only Goldman employee who got arrested was a guy who took something FROM Goldman. Not someone who helped crash the economy. A Russian programmer named Sergey Aleynikov who copied some code.
Flash Boys by Michael Lewis - A Wall Street Revolt Retelling
So I just finished re-reading Flash Boys by Michael Lewis, and honestly, it hits different every time. This book came out in 2014 and people are still arguing about it. That tells you something.