[ewood]

I also thought the title was pretty much click bait. The FT, WSJ and others have more nuanced articles on the event. Most of the evidence seems to point to falling liquidity setting up the conditions and the jitters around the end of QE3 being the trigger. As for why there is falling liquidity it seems to be multiple reasons including dealer banks rising aversion to risk, the fact that market makers on private platforms aren't obligated to take volume, and investors may be allocating away from fixed-income hedge funds. None of those reasons point to some sort of "Flash Boys" HFT conspiracy, just the normal ebb and flow of global markets.