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Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis, published by W. W. Norton, 2014.
I got interested in this book because of an NPR story. (This type of thing happens frequently.) It’s fascinating to find out what’s really going on with something, especially an entity as supposedly public as public stock markets. Michael Lewis is known for writing about the story behind the story. Most people probably know about him from The Blind Side, which you really should read even if you’re not interested in football. He’s also written about baseball (Moneyball) and other aspects of the financial markets (Liar’s Poker and The Big Short). I’ve read all these other books except for Moneyball (but I saw the movie).
This book came along at an interesting time in our lives. Gideon was in the hospital, and we needed something to do for entertainment during our daily visits. Trying to watch TV in his room was very frustrating and not all that great for communication. Since he couldn’t sit up for the first few weeks he couldn’t play games. Conversing with someone in the hospital is pretty desultory once you’ve covered what the doctors said and what the nurses did since your last visit. So that leaves . . . reading aloud. We used to do this a lot as a family when Gideon was in grade school and when we didn’t even have a DVD player (much less a TV). I had the book with me at one visit and asked Jim and Gideon if they’d like me to take a shot at it, which they did. So I plunged in, skipping only the more esoteric sections. What makes any story interesting is the characters involved, and believe me, Lewis has those. His main hero is a quiet, unassuming genius from Canada named Brad Katsuyama, who figures out that something fishy is going on with the trades he makes for the Royal Bank of Canada and ends up running his own stock exchange . There are plenty of quirky secondary characters, too, and a plot that includes lots of secrecy and skulduggery (although apparently not anything truly illegal). I don’t know that you’ll come away with any information that will help you build your financial portfolio, but you’ll gain some skepticism about those numbers that are thrown around every day about how much the stock exchanges have gained or lost. (Warning: There’s a fair amount of bad language; I did a lot of editing on the fly as I read.)
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