Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt

by Michael Lewis

The new players in the financial markets, the kingpins of the future who had the capacity to reshape those markets, were a different breed: the Chinese guy who had spent the previous ten years in American universities; the French particle physicist from Fermilab; the Russian aerospace engineer; the Indian PhD in electrical engineering. “There were just thousands of these people,” said Schwall. “Basically all of them with advanced degrees. I remember thinking to myself how unfortunate it was that so many engineers were joining these firms to exploit investors rather than solving public problems.” These highly trained scientists and technicians tended to be pulled onto Wall Street by the big banks and then, after they’d learned the ropes, to move on to smaller high-frequency trading shops.