[dragonwriter]

I think viewing the HFT tax propoals as being motivated by anti-nerd rather than a out accumulation of wealth that is perceived to be at the expense of people like the tax supporter where the tax supporter fails to see the social utility of the function producing the accumulation of wealth is, well, a significant case of seeing what you want to see rather than what is actually there.

[yummyfajitas]

Go read Flash Boys. It's almost literally "Revenge of the Jocks". You have a jock (Katsuyama) who is naively bro-ing down and schmoozing clients while selling button pushing services to them.

Suddenly some evil nerds come along and use computers to "pick him off"! ("Pick off" is a wonderful phrase Michael Lewis uses but never defines, but it somehow involves computers doing evil things.)

Finally, at the end, Katsuyama builds a new exchange with no nerds allowed.

[Inconel]

I was planning on reading Flash Boys at some point but if this is your overall description of the book my enthusiasm has been tempered.

Have you read, and if so, would you recommend I read Flash Boys: Not So Fast by Peter Kovac for a more balanced/informed perspective on the subject? Should I read both? Keep in mind my knowledge of HFT is extremely limited.

[yummyfajitas]

I have not read "Flash Boys: Not So Fast", so I can't comment on it. I do however recommend completely skipping Flash Boys - it provides almost no new information and a lot of FUD.

If you want an introduction to HFT, I'll shamelessly plug my blog posts which describe the basic mechanics of it:

https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/hft_apology.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/hft_apology2.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/hft_whats_broken.htm...

I also wrote a few posts later on about controversial HFT topics: https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/flash_crash_flash_in... https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/fervent_defense_of_f... https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/quote_stuffing_is_a_...

My posts probably read more like a "how to program python" tutorial than a compelling Michael Lewis narrative, however.

The book Trading and Exchanges ( http://amzn.to/2f0qtJb ) goes into a lot more detail than my blog, but it costs about $50-$90.

[Inconel]

I appreciate your response. I'm familiar with your blog but I haven't set a time aside to review your posts on HFT. I will certainly do so now. Thanks for linking me the relevant posts.

[dragonwriter]

I was thinking more of outside support for the proposal. Pretty obviously, the inside-the-industry support is just supporting burdens imposed selectively on competing business models, which is common independent of nerd/jock associations.