Michael Lewis Doesn't Like High-Frequency Traders

I suppose one way to evaluate your life is to ask yourself, would I be the hero of a Michael Lewis book, or the villain? Am I a clever young outsider applying rigorous quantitative thinking to revolutionize a stodgy stupid business that is bad for its customers, or am I, you know, the stodgy stupid one?

Brad Katsuyama is the latest Michael Lewis hero, which is nice for him. I haven't read Lewis's new book yet, but "60 Minutes" had a segment on it last night, and here is an excerpt. Katsuyama was an equities trader at Royal Bank of Canada who discovered one day that the equity markets were rigged. Big mutual funds that wanted to buy a lot of shares found that it was hard to do so at displayed prices: As soon as they started buying shares, the price started to go up.