A high-frequency trader gave me this book on high-frequency trading many months ago, and I promised I would review it. It has taken me a long time to get to this because reading the book was like chewing through cardboard.

Not So Fast is a line-by-line takedown of Michael Lewis’s Flash Boys, from the perspective of a high-frequency trader.

In summary:
The stock market isn’t rigged. Michael Lewis and Brad Katsuyama mistook the price impact of large orders for front-running. Thirty-eight miles of fiber-optic cable in a shoebox could have been implemented in a line of code. The End.

There’s a reason why Flash Boys resulted in a class-action lawsuit against exchanges and Not So Fast didn’t result in a class-action lawsuit against Michael Lewis. Lewis is a NY Times bestselling storyteller, and Kovac is a guy who writes software.

See Also:
How High-Frequency Trading Makes the World a Better Place (part 2)