Out of curiosity, since you're a strong defender of HFT here, have you read Lewis' book yet? You mention the hype, but I've found the hype and the substance of the book to be quite different. A lot of the hype on both sides seems to start and end around the first few chapters (one of which was excerpted publicly) and the "60 Minutes" piece.
When I finally finished the book, I didn't get the sense that his target was HFT alone. He heaps plenty of criticism on the bankers, the dark pools, the brokers selling order flow of their customers, the SEC's revolving door and apathy, and (implicitly, with exercise left to the reader) the conflicts of interest of the people selling the SEC the systems (MIDAS) that purport to keep the market fair.
It's the defensiveness of the HFTs and exchanges (like Direct Edge's O'Brien) that has me a little bewildered at why they feel persecuted in particular, when a better strategy might be acknowledging that there are some systemic flaws and look to fix them before another ill-thought out regulatory approach is put into place.
I don't see IEX as a pure white knight, but I do give them props for getting into the arena with a solution for one part of the problem instead of complaining bitterly, spreading FUD and launching ad hominem attacks on authors who are shining light on a whole slew of questionable practices as a lot of the people in the hype machine have done on the financial news channels since the book has been out.
I haven't read the book. That's why I'm not attacking the book, but only specific claims which people who read the book repeat. Most notably, confusing people that the "little guy" is David Einhorn, confusing everyone (including Mark Cuban) that HFT's have some ability to "jump in front" of other orders (they don't), and obfuscating the fact that HFT's pulling their orders is just a way of price discriminating against big guys.
spreading FUD and launching ad hominem attacks on authors
The only person spreading FUD is Lewis. I'm unaware of any ad-hominem attacks on him - all I see is "Lewis is wrong in X,Y,Z, did that idiot even talk to an HFT?" (Not an ad hominem Lewis being an idiot is orthogonal to the real argument, which is X,Y,Z.)
When I finally finished the book, I didn't get the sense that his target was HFT alone. He heaps plenty of criticism on the bankers, the dark pools, the brokers selling order flow of their customers, the SEC's revolving door and apathy, and (implicitly, with exercise left to the reader) the conflicts of interest of the people selling the SEC the systems (MIDAS) that purport to keep the market fair.
It's the defensiveness of the HFTs and exchanges (like Direct Edge's O'Brien) that has me a little bewildered at why they feel persecuted in particular, when a better strategy might be acknowledging that there are some systemic flaws and look to fix them before another ill-thought out regulatory approach is put into place.
I don't see IEX as a pure white knight, but I do give them props for getting into the arena with a solution for one part of the problem instead of complaining bitterly, spreading FUD and launching ad hominem attacks on authors who are shining light on a whole slew of questionable practices as a lot of the people in the hype machine have done on the financial news channels since the book has been out.