An Adaptation From ‘Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt,’ by Michael Lewis

Fascinating idea: insane society-scale bureaucracies make puzzle solvers out of everyone.

Sokoloff was Russian, born and raised in a city on the Volga River. He had an explanation for why so many of his countrymen wound up in high-frequency trading. The old Soviet educational system channeled people into math and science. And the Soviet-controlled economy was horrible and complicated but riddled with loopholes, an environment that left those who mastered it well prepared for Wall Street in the early 21st century.

I swear to god, I witness this every day while trying to trade oil futures. I watch institutional orders for as many as 200 contracts (almost $1,000,000 worth of margin) appear just below support or just above resistance, and as soon as a large market order goes through that will push through that order, the order is instantly retracted, faster than my trading platform can even perceive. These orders exist for less than 1-3 seconds, typically, and they make me so angry. These people aren't happy robbing new investors by using investor wisdom (perfectly legit). They have to do it in a snaky way like this. It makes day trading (which is a perfectly valid thing to do - it provides liquidity to markets, and offloads near-term risk to those willing to take it for a small profit) impossible for anyone with less than millions of dollars and close-to-market connectivity (e.g., large cables leading to a server room next door to CME or NYSE or NASDAQ, etc.) to have a chance at surviving.