“The United States stock market, the most iconic market in global capitalism, is rigged.”

“That’s what Michael Lewis told Steve Kroft on the CBS show “60 Minutes” on Sunday evening. It was a clever, if hyperbolic, way for Mr. Lewis to describe the topic of his important new book, “Flash Boys,” a make-your-blood-boil read about the abusive way that high-frequency trading works.

“Mr. Lewis’s well-crafted narrative highlights a perverse system on Wall Street that has allowed certain professional investors to pay hundreds of millions of dollars a year to locate their computer servers close to stock exchanges so they can make trades milliseconds ahead of everyone else.

“In some cases, the superfast investors are able to glean crucial information from the stream of trading data flowing into their systems that allows them to see what stocks other investors are about to buy before they are able to complete their orders.”

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Read full NY Times article here.