Recommendations

Books Like Flash Boys

Best books to read after Flash Boys by Michael Lewis

Flash Boys investigates the world of high-frequency trading and the systematic rigging of financial markets against ordinary investors, told through the story of the team that built IEX to fix it. These 8 books extend into Wall Street culture, financial crisis, market structure, and the long history of market manipulation.

  1. 1

    The Big Short

    by Michael Lewis

    Lewis's companion investigation of the 2008 financial crisis — the same Wall Street dysfunction seen from the derivative-market perspective, with the same character-driven narrative and the same diagnosis of systemic incentive failure.

    Buy
  2. 2

    Liar's Poker

    by Michael Lewis

    Lewis's debut memoir of his years as a bond salesman in the 1980s — the historical backstory to the Wall Street culture that Flash Boys investigates, and the book that established Lewis's approach to financial journalism.

    Buy
  3. 3

    Dark Pools

    by Scott Patterson

    An investigative account of the rise of algorithmic trading, dark pools, and the fragmentation of the American stock market — covering the same territory as Flash Boys from a journalist who has tracked these developments across multiple books.

    Buy
  4. 4

    The Man from the Future

    by Ananyo Bhattacharya

    The biography of John von Neumann — the mathematician whose work in game theory, computing, and probability underlies modern financial engineering — providing the intellectual history behind the algorithmic trading world Flash Boys investigates.

    Buy
  5. 5

    Den of Thieves

    by James B. Stewart

    The definitive account of the 1980s insider trading scandals — Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, and Drexel Burnham Lambert — establishing the long history of Wall Street market manipulation that Flash Boys continues.

    Buy
  6. 6

    Boomerang

    by Michael Lewis

    Lewis's account of the European sovereign debt crisis — visiting Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Germany, and California to trace the aftermath of the same financial excess that Flash Boys investigates at the market-structure level.

    Buy
  7. 7

    Chaos Kings

    by Scott Patterson

    Patterson's account of the 'chaos kings' — traders and funds that profit from extreme volatility and market crisis — that provides the trading-strategy context for the high-frequency trading world Flash Boys investigates.

    Buy
  8. 8

    Too Big to Fail

    by Andrew Ross Sorkin

    The definitive inside account of the 2008 financial crisis — the decisions made inside banks, regulators, and the government during the week Lehman Brothers collapsed — that shows the institutional failure underlying the market-structure problems Flash Boys diagnoses.

    Buy

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