Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt

by Michael Lewis

His other problem was Spivey, who was all over him about the slightest detours. For instance, every so often the right-of-way crossed over from one side of the road to the other, and the line needed to cross the road within its boundaries. These constant road crossings irritated Spivey—Williams was making sharp right and left turns. “Steve, you’re costing me a hundred nanoseconds,” he’d say. (A nanosecond is one billionth of one second.) And: “Can you at least cross it diagonally?” Spivey was a worrier. He thought that when a person took risks, the thing that went wrong was usually a thing the person hadn’t thought about, and so he tried to think about the things he wouldn’t naturally think about. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange might close and move to New Jersey. The Calumet River might prove impassable. Some company with deep pockets—a big Wall Street bank, a telecom carrier—might discover what he was doing and do it themselves. That last fear—that someone else was already out there, digging his own straight tunnel—consumed him. Every construction person he talked to thought he was out of his mind, and yet he was sure the Alleghenies were crawling with people who shared his obsession. “When something becomes obvious to you,” he said, “you immediately think surely someone else is doing this.”