This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

Financial markets that are portrayed as efficient mechanisms for price discovery and capital allocation actually operate as sophisticated systems of wealth extraction where institutional players use information advantages, technological superiority, and regulatory capture to profit at the expense of ordinary investors. This manipulation occurs through multiple mechanisms that are largely invisible to retail investors while being perfectly legal under current regulatory frameworks that were designed to serve institutional interests rather than protect individual market participants.

High-frequency trading operations use advanced computer algorithms and microsecond-level speed advantages to extract profits from normal market transactions through techniques that are essentially technological front-running of slower market participants. These systems can detect incoming orders and trade ahead of them, capturing tiny profits on millions of transactions while imposing hidden costs on pension funds, mutual funds, and individual investors who must pay slightly higher prices or receive slightly lower prices because of this technological arbitrage.

Market making and liquidity provision, while providing apparent benefits to market efficiency, often involves sophisticated pricing strategies that widen bid-ask spreads during volatile periods when investors most need liquidity, while market makers use their privileged access to order flow information to trade against their own customers when profitable opportunities arise.