Flash Boys Moral

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One character in Flash Boys that is portrayed as moral is Brad Katsuyama. Brad started his career at the Royal Bank of Canada and did very well for himself. At RBC, Brad was able to establish himself as a good trader, but the bank itself attempted to do moral business. Early on, Brad comments that RBC had a “no-asshole rule” where the company turned down Wall Street guys that seemed to be typically obnoxious, thus giving RBC the nickname “RBC nice” (26). Later on, it became clear to Brad that most people working in this field had little “knowledge about high-frequency trading, he was not vain and did not focus too much on money. Even after the 2008 financial crisis when Brad thought about quitting Wall Street, he said that “his heart had been in his job, but mainly because he liked the people he worked for and the people who worked for him” (39). Still, he could not walk away because he saw that the markets were rigged and high-frequency traders were taking advantage of unsuspecting investors. He acted morally first at RBC by declining to open a dark pool which they could sell to high-frequency traders. From then on, he devoted his energy to …show more content…

Coming from Bank of America, Schwall saw first hand (especially after the 2008 crisis) how corrupt Wall Street was “with no corporate loyalty to employers” and “a lot of unspoken animosity” (92). Schwall shared Brad’s angry at the rigged markets as he said: “as soon as you realize that you are not able to execute your orders because someone else is able to identify what you are trying to do and race ahead of you, it’s over” (95). He continued by stating that “people set out this way to make money from everyone else’s retirement account” that in turn hurt honest people like his parents (95). Schwall’s dedication to “figuring out who was doing the screwing” of the market is why he is revered along with the other characters as a moral fighter against unfair

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