The book is a non-fiction investigation into the phenomenon of high-frequency trading (HFT) in the US financial market, with the author interviewing and collecting the experiences of several individuals working on Wall Street.
The first chapter tells the story of a $300 million project from Spread Networks that was underway in mid-2009—the construction of an 827-mile (1,331 km) fiber-optic cable that cuts straight through mountains and rivers from Chicago to New Jersey—with the sole goal of reducing the transmission time for data from 17 to 13 milliseconds.
The central story details financial executive Brad Katsuyama's discovery of how access to this fiber-optic cable—as well as other technologies and special arrangements between HFT firms, exchanges, and large Wall Street banks—presents an opportunity for those insider institutions to profit at the expense of retail investors.
To counter this, Katsuyama bands together a team that sets out to develop a new exchange, called IEX, designed specifically to prevent the unfair advantage enjoyed by HFT firms in the rest of the market.
[8] The final chapter is dedicated to the tribulation of Sergey Aleynikov, a former Goldman Sachs programmer twice prosecuted and twice acquitted for a single act of allegedly copying proprietary computer source code from his employer before joining a competing firm.
He notes the tower showed signs of age, and could have been erected some time ago, for some other purpose, but the ancillary equipment including a generator, a concrete bunker, and repeaters that amplify financial signals, were all new.
Could that be because the primary cause of that momentary blip lay in a confluence of regulatory mistakes and that it was many of the demonized HFTs who actually stood fast throughout and thereby ensured that the damage was a fraction of what it could have been had only the shell-shocked, traditional participants been left to respond?
"[19] An Oxford University Press handbook chapter authored by Andreas Fleckner calls Flash Boys a readable and mostly accurate introduction into such topics as dark pools, front-running, or kickbacks.
[23] The chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Mary Jo White, stated in Congressional testimony on April 29, 2014, that U.S. financial markets "are not rigged" in response to a direct question on claims in Lewis's book.
[24] Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg disputed claims made in Lewis' book on May 2, 2014, stating in a CNBC interview that "the system isn’t rigged.
In June that year, it was announced that Flash Boys was to be adapted into a major motion picture, with acclaimed screenwriter/producer Aaron Sorkin penning the screenplay, and Scott Rudin and Eli Bush producing the film.