All that was clear that the profits to be had from smart people making complicated bets overwhelmed anything that could be had from servicing custome… - Michael Lewis

Reg NMS was intended to create equality of opportunity in the U.S. stock market. Instead it institutionalized a more pernicious inequality. A small class of insiders with the resources to create speed were now allowed to preview the market and trade on what they had seen.

They traded in the market the way card counters in a casino played blackjack: They played only when they had an edge. That’s why they were able to trade for five years without losing money on a single day.

Thus the only Goldman Sachs employee arrested by the FBI in the aftermath of a financial crisis Goldman had done so much to fuel was the employee Goldman asked the FBI to arrest.