# Quote — Michael Lewis, Flash Boys

> The orders resting on BATS were typically just the 100-share minimum required for an order to be at the front of any price queue, as their only purpose was to tease information out of investors. The HFT firms posted these tiny orders on BATS—orders to buy or sell 100 shares of basically every stock traded in the U.S. market—not because they actually wanted to buy and sell the stocks but because they wanted to find out what investors wanted to buy and sell before they did it. BATS, unsurprisingly, had been created by high-frequency traders.

- Author: [Michael Lewis](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-lewis.md)
- Book: [Flash Boys](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-lewis/flash-boys.md)
- Page: 73
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Lewis_(author)#Flash_Boys_(2014)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-lewis/flash-boys/the-orders-resting

## More from this book

> He now suspected that every human being who knew how high-frequency traders made money was making too much money doing it to stop and explain what was going on.

p. 55 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-lewis/flash-boys/he-now-suspected.md)

> Thus the only Goldman Sachs employee arrested by the FBI in the aftermath of a financial crisis Goldman had done so much to fuel was the employee Goldman asked the FBI to arrest.

p. 148 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-lewis/flash-boys/thus-the-only.md)

> "Liquidity" was one of those words Wall Street people threw around when they wanted the conversation to end, and for brains to go dead, and for all questioning to cease.

p. 108 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-lewis/flash-boys/liquidity-was-one.md)