This NYT piece is heavy on moralizing rhetoric and light on technical details. The BloombergView piece by Matt Levine [1] is much better:<p>&quot;It&#x27;s important to realize that slowing everyone down by 350 microseconds can&#x27;t possibly help anyone. As Hudson River Trading said in its comment letter: &quot;Similar to a 100-meter sprint, if you simply add 350 microseconds to each participant’s time, neither the order in which they finish nor their time differentials will change.&quot;&quot;<p>It would indeed be pointless if everything was slowed down by 350μs, which is why that is not the case. IEX lets its own &quot;pegged orders&quot; and &quot;routable orders&quot; cut the line, picking off liquidity at the other exchanges. If IEX is approved, there will be an arms race, with other exchanges inserting their own similar delays. Even worse, because of Reg NMS you can&#x27;t legally avoid trading on IEX even if you wanted to. If the price of a stock is falling rapidly and you wanted to sell, IEX will always have the best price since it is stale by 350μs. Everyone will be forced to send their orders to IEX, even if everyone knows that the bid there is illusory.<p>The Matt Levine piece is very good. Do please read the whole thing.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloombergview.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2015-12-22&#x2F;the-flash-boys-exchange-is-still-controversial" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloombergview.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2015-12-22&#x2F;the-flash-b...</a>