If your ambition is to maximize short-term gain without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing the cost. If you want to preserv… - Michael Lewis

Someone out there was using the fact that stock market orders arrived at different times at different exchanges to front-run orders from one market to another.

People who had lived without government were more likely to find meaning in it. On the other hand, people who had never experienced a collapsed state were slow to appreciate a state that had not yet collapsed.

It was neither healthy nor good when public stock exchanges introduced order types and speed advantages that high-frequency traders could use to exploit everyone else. This sort of inefficiency didn't vanish the moment it was spotted and acted upon. It was like a broken slot machine in the casino that pays off every time. It would keep paying off until someone said something about it; but no one who played the slot machine had any interest in pointing out that it was broken.