“60 Minutes” Explains How The U.S. Stock Market Is Rigged & How A Young Canadian Saved It

As Steve Kroft explains in his fascinating 60 Minutes  exposė of Wall Street, the New York attorney general and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission in Washington have each recently launched investigations into the mechanics of how high-frequency computerized stock trading works — an important investigation especially considering this type of trading now controls more than half the market.  The investigations were announced just ahead of the release of Michael Lewis’s upcoming book Flash Boys.  The book tells the story of how the market is rigged to benefit a small group of investors who are skimming off the top.  The dubious scheme might have gone unnoticed for much longer, had it not been for one Canadian banker named Brad Katsuyama who was working for RBC’s New York office.  Brad painstakingly discovered how the scheme was working, and in response he created his own stock market named IEX which removes the bad guys from the picture, thereby creating a clean stock market free of crooks.