That was a rather transparent straw man argument you came up with there. Lewis is not against electronic trading. And he is certainly not trying to bring back the pits. He is against high frequency trading, or the ability of some insiders to obtain an advantage over the ordinary investor.
> Big investor. If you are a retail investor, the HFTs don't know about you until after your 2 lot trade is finished.
Doesn't that obfuscate the fact that most retail investors interact with the market via various funds and intermediaries - which in turn collectively makes them a "big" investor?
Big investors = agents of little guys + rich people.
Little investors = all little guys.
Lewis is shilling for a group which is disproportionately not the little guy.
Further, skewing the market in favor of the big guy is just a way to ensure that the big guys can rip off the little guy. Once the little guy is forced to subsidize liquidity for the big guys (as Lewis wants), he might as well just pay a mutual fund the 50bps management fee rather than managing his own 401k.
Many big investors, e.g. mutual funds, trade on behalf of retail investors, so everyone is screwed. That was one of Lewis's core arguments in the book.
> the ability of some insiders to obtain an advantage over the ordinary investor.
What are you talking about? Who are these 'insiders'? Anyone is free to build a trading system that uses speed as an asset if they have the will and ability to. Speed of information used to be considered a noble thing for traders to invest in.
