Wall Street should have kept the sex thing going

Wall Street always frets about the latest skimming scheme close to home ( for more than a century).

Wall Street, however, missed a big warning about slick Russian cash rustlers. The Putin-punks have been hijacking big stock orders while being filled around the U.S. in online market orders— just microseconds before the final order ever reaches the checkout. Like scalpers boldly seizing a box office window ahead of kickoff, the hijacking hackers snatched and flipped stocks in microseconds — so called flash trades — and skimmed a markup by illegal middleman before the orders ever got to the checkout. It also raised final prices.

That’s when some savvy investors fought back. They launched a program that rides shotgun over stocks all the way to checkouts, cutting out the bandits.

The problem? The shotgun concept was hard to sell to traders, not sexy enough, simply because of a clumsy name. The naie? “Investors Exchange” - which appeared and got displayed as, “investors sex change.”

That tidbit is in a new bombshell book by Michael Lewis (“Flash Boys”). It tells why the high frequency greed of flash trading will sink Wall Street as we know it. The shotgun remedy has since got a name change, to IEX. 

Congressional investigators should read the whole book first before launching more probes. It’ll make them look pretty smart in TV sound bites.

Meanwhile, anyone know if any Russians used the $100,000 bills at flash dance clubs?

Money Tricks

Flash dancing quickies

CITY NEWS REPORT.org