As a side note, if you are an outsider who is at all interested in finance and are a well-educated person, Matt Levine (the writer of this article) is one of the finest sources of information. His articles are accessible, thorough and well thought out.

Of course not. The pre-existing, traditional exchanges are about the little guy. A retail investor can now buy or sell a stock with unprecedentedly low execution slippage.

The current HFT-driven market penalizes haphazard execution of much larger orders.

USA Today did a profile today as well: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/02/25/why-wall-stre...

Interestingly IEX's application has attracted 388 comment letters, with 99% supportive and Citadel's one of the handful against: http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/4709.html

For contrast, the BATS application received 3 comments only.

Title is a little misleading. The article is seeking to refute a letter from Citadel opposing the establishment of IEX ('Flash Boys' exchange) on the grounds that it is not as efficient for the smaller retail investor. Article explains how 1) many of the retirement funds and institutional investors do actually represent the little guy 2) why exchanges that encourage HFT are costing all of us with retirement funds lots of extra dollars.

I for one would like to see traders compete something other than speed and hope to see the IEX up and approved as an exchange sooner rather than later.

Anyone think we will get something that is happening in AdTech? There are several ad exchanges and there is 'header bidding' technology which let's you hit all the exchanges at once for the bets price. Anyone know if this is already occurring in stock exchanges?

I've started reading through the 388 comment letters to IEX's application, and this one in particular is basically a free lecture on the relevant issues by a professor at the University of Chicago -

https://www.sec.gov/comments/10-222/10222-371.pdf

I'm shocked; an actually good article about IEX which doesn't come from their marketing department.