We started in college my cofounder and i, and i, 2004 when the idea came of, kind of came about when we launched, as soon as we launched we focused on the Consumer Market but what happened was we saw google, Apple Microsoft others potentially as big competitors in the consumer space, but when we went and looked at the Enterprise Market there are tens of billions of dollars spent every year on technology we didnt think was going to enable enter prize to be more productive with their information and also not as secure with their data so we sided to pivot the company and focus entirely on enterprise, that was 2006, 2007 so for about eight years all we have done is focus ongoing, Building Platform for Large Enterprises to manage and secure their information. Rose Michael Lewis and aaron levie when we continue. Funding for charlie rose is provided by the rose additional funding provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose Michael Lewis is here, he. Rose to prominence more than 25 years ago with liars poker, that book is considered among the accounts of wall street excesses during the 1980s, he has since covered a variety of subjects from Major League Baseball to the financial crisis, of 2008. Last spring he published flash boys, it examined the world of High Frequency stock trading in which machines prevailed at the expense of everyone else. One year later, a new afterward accesses the challenges that remain for High Frequency trading. I am pleased to have Michael Lewis back at this table. Welcome. Thank charlie. What is it you are saying in the afterward that happened since the publication of this book . The Public Relations firm hired by High Frequency traders have gotten a lot better at attacking me, but other than that, what has happened . Rose a few came to see me after we did that long interview. It is really like being on the receiving end rose hear us out is all they said. It is an organized Political Campaign and i can understand why because there is a lot of money at stake. What happened what am i saying . So there are two ways of looking at this world. One is as a problem that the regulators need to solve, that you have got this stock market that is screwed up and they, it got really screwy at the heart of it and may lead to ruin and there is nothing else that actually leads to a lot of kind of attacks on investors, it is totally unnecessary. But i dont i never actually held up much hope the regulators would do anything. So what happened since the book came out there has been a lot of noise out of regulatory bodies, the new York AttorneyGenerals Office the justice department, so on and so forth, it is hard to see where it has led, what has actually happened nothing has actually happened. Rose do you believe it will happen. I dont think the sec will do anything. Rose how about the new York Attorney general . Yes. I think the new York Attorney general may have real, real effects. He has sued barclays for his for miss representing the role High Frequency traders played in the dark pool and and there may be more lawsuits to file he and he has broad powers that could actually have some effect but i actually think while that is all very important, the real story is what is happening on the ground in the market with these characters that i wrote about. Rose that you the people that that created an exchange where they made it as difficult as possible for High Frequency traders to take advantage of ordinary investors on the market, and the market is taking off, i mean, it is very profitable, they have attract, since the book came out 75 million in venture capital. Rose so they are growing. They are growing and becoming a Public Exchange like the New York Stock Exchange in the fall and that is a huge deal, because things Like Companies listed on it, moving their listings to them could happen. They have their volume grew dramatically increased and put pressure on the rest of the market to reform. Rose more efficient at a lower cost . For investors. Rose right. Thats right. And so that is, i think that is the path to change and it seems to be happening. It is it is it is certainly the greatest hope. Rose it seems to me the attention, rather than on the what you were saying was sort of the idea that the market was rigged, everybody loved that story. Huh. And you come along and say well maybe it is in part and everybody just ate that up. Yeah. Well uh, it this is so yes, it is true that created a little splash when i was on 60 minute they asked if i thought the market was rigged and i said yes because i do. Rose and a lot of people said, aha mabel, did you hear what he said i have been telling yo but they may not get my meaning about how. Thats my point. So it is rigged because there is a systematic grift built into it you have a handful of people who have been sold special access to information and rose faster than anybody else and better price. So you are colluding. You are colliding with people who small hands will pay for a Privileged Access who have no more than you do. You are trading at a disadvantage. Have they changed their practice one iota since you wrote the book . It is hard to tell. I have been told, the technical issue is the speed difference between the market that the ordinary investors sees and the market that the High Frequency trader sees. I mean, it is a matter of, you know, milliseconds. And i have been told that dark pools for example, and the exchanges have been investing with a little more alacrity in speeding up the market that the ordinary investor sees so they may be shrinking the gap a bit but i just dont know i should know, the sec should be telling us but i dont know. It is not clear. There has been no there has been no there has been no real symptomatic change. The grift is still built into the market. Rose you and i talked about this before but i mean, what does the sorry i stohr i are have to have that interest you . You have to have characters that interest you . Thats the main thing, i really had very litter native interest in in a story about a wall street scandal. The financial crisis, the big the desire. Yeah, absolutely. It wasnt the scandal even in that case that interested me the most. What was interesting was the way people responded to it and these characters are what i loved about this book. What i loved was that you had these people who were inside the market, in exchanges, in Brokerage Firms who even from High Frequency trading shops who saw that it was a big problem in the on account of the way the market was functioning and saw holes in the market and instead of trying to make money from the glitches in the market they they banded together to try to fix it. So it showed that the moral impulse for the impulse of that meaningful work, the impulse to do something good in the world, uh, to like what you did all day, exists on wall street. And i thought this is actually extreme think helpful and i thought if i can if i can explain what these people have done and and amplify it, uh, that other people will follow their example. Rose basically, you have said if i see a story in which i think that i can do something good by doing the story, it is generally i will go for it . Thats yes, so red meat. Not just the consequences of the story though, its its it is when i feel the story soso rich that uh, that if i if i dont do it i have made a big mistake that, that in fact i have been entrusted in the story, in this case i was, they werent going to talk to anybody else. They werent going to talk to anybody else. So i felt when i was entrusted with a story i kind of have an obligation it creates sufficient, uh, sort of like, uh, energy to go and actually do the work. When you figure out you have an idea with characters that is like you have just hit a home run. Yeah. I i feel i do feel like and i hide it, you know. I dont want people to know what i am doing. Rose i will use that metaphor. I dont want people to know i have this treasure. But but it was clearly, this was clearly, uh like a really rich vein to mine. Rose i want to move beyond that. This is what some of the people have said we cuddle some remarked here, all of these people i assume you know, barrons and other publications. The motion High Frequency traders use their technology to pick off the little guy, that part of flash boys is wrong. Mary joe white the equity markets are strong and continue to to serve the interests of both and. The head of her division and trading and markets 0 who oversees the markets who recently left the sec, there was just a piece in Bloomberg News he described the stock market as a death star it is so screwed up and it is he couldnt speak freely when he was at the sec so there is a great deal of dissent below Mary Joe White on whether the stock market is actually rose lets continue there, then. John the founder of the Vanguard Group which you know, that is what you do to sell books. I dont know how it is rigged. The real point is he doesnt make one bit of difference to an investor who is in an index fund for a lifetime. Well, so there is some truth this is interest canning because vanguard is the one big investor who has come out and said, dont mess with the current system. Rose right. So rose low cost index fund. What is that . They are a they are terrific, i think everybody should be in them. So this is not taking anything away from vanguard, but the costs that are imposed by high frequently traders on the market, the tax falls on active investors, it falls on big mutual fund, it falls on retail investors, anybody who is trading a lot on the market. It falls so the index funds are less act five the market. Uh, so it gives them a relative advantage to have their competition being taxed, there is a reason he would be less concerned about it, umar farouk. Some of vanguard was quoted assaying this very early on, whatever the problems, are dont fix it at the regulatory level you will make more problems. They dont trust anybody to fix it. So they are cynical. I have interviewed people who run some of the biggest institutional Money Managers in the country, i mean, hundreds of billions of dollars of equity funds, and they are calculating the costs to them of the current stock market. They are livid about it. I mean just before i wrote rose i mean not that but it is a cost item, it is a cost of it is people front running their orders. Rose right. So it is uninformed for the head of vanguard just to dismiss it that way and it isnt me saying the stock market is rigged. It is people right in the heart of the market who the figured out and teaching wow in the book how it is rigged. So it is ignorant and it is forgivable because he created vanguard and vanguard is terrific. Rose okay. Lets turn away from this. We have talked about this an hour on the other show, an hour the last time you were here. What interests you . Does biography interest you . For example. What, would i want to write a biography . Rose would you like to be Walter Eisner . No, i wouldnt do it well. Rose why not . You would do it perfectly well. Give me an argument why you wouldnt do a biography why. Rose you know you could do it you could i didnt a good biography, which you do, but you wouldnt want to because . Well biography gives you a narrative,. Rose oh. It is sort of like there is a frame. Yes. At the born he lived, he died. Rose right. And the narratives that excite me are the narratives i find, it is sort of like what the is the story. You find i think i would feel like too much was handed to me and i also think there is a level of like good buying ferre is a capacity to get obsessed with a single character. But also good biography who understands the power of the question why . Thats true. They know what they just dont know why. Thats not also apparent. Thats true. Rose and it is what you discover that answers the why, research and all of that. And some speculation too. I mean, obviously buying graphical elements to all of my books, i try to capture characters on pages but i have never it is just for whatever reason even when i know rose no political figure no scientific figure i dont want to seem like i am not interested in people but i am but when i turn to the president , even like president obama i have an interest but my interest in writing to him is peculiar, about the way he makes decisions. Rose thats a book. Thats a book i would love to write but it would be, you know, a if he left me in to to do it i would take only a slice of rose why would he do that . Because thats the book he wants to write. I think he probably wants to the write a grand sweeping narrative of his presidency. Thats why he makes decisions, isnt it . In part. Rose if he didnt include that in his own memoir then something is missing from the memoir. Are you trying to kill my book project . Because actually rose i am not. It conflict with his book. It would be a nice compliment to his book. Rose okay. And because rose . President if you are listening what lewis wants to do is a huge comment on those things you dont want to write about mr. Lewis does. But rose did i redeem to get back to the original question, i dont i dont i think some people walter ice sack son himself is a friend, good friend, he grew up in new orleans and seven years ago ahead of me in school, i was told over and over when i was a child one day i should grow up to be just like him. Every kid in the school got this lecture about we all has to be walter ice sack son. Rose now you need to write a book about a great man, you need to do that next. I wouldnt know where to begin and what to do about that. So even though i was told by walter no less a person than walter that i should go do that it just didnt catch. It doesnt interest me. And maybe ego assist cal and maybe i dont want to, i dont want someone else to take over my book to the extent rose . And everything you have said, tell me the one person who would most likely attract you. Ha you mean if you put a gun to my head and said i have to write a biography . Rose you have to write one. I would probably rose come on we know what you would say. Do you think i would say obama . Rose i dont know. Uh, it is the there really isnt anybody who i would just want to spend that amount of time. Rose no athlete no president no huge cultural figure . Who would who has dominated hawaii his or her world . A lot of books i would love to write which sound a little bit lying biographies, like Peyton Manning, i would love to spend a season with him, quarterback of the Denver Broncos his last season and just about the way the way someone can essentially think their way to success on a football field. Rose what interests me about this, someone said to me the other day that me, they were talking about me, the thing that interests me about you is that you are fascinated by how people achieve what they do what is the elements of their own not success in terms of because you want to write about this is your way to success, but success in terms of understanding achievement, understanding sacrifice, understanding understanding what that person knew to be able to climb that mountain. Right. Rose that interests me. Is that the same thing it does interest me. Other things that interest me too but that is. Rose that is part of what interests me. Therefore, Peyton Manning is a wonderful story and tom brady there was a long New York Times article he is actually pro football, Peyton Manning is playing games without throwing a football. Rose it is his mind. It it is his mine. His mind gives him fractions of a second advantage, he is a High Frequency trader on the football field so i mean so there is an example, someone mentioned but i would do it for a specific reason and i wouldnt want want to go into his childcare. I wouldnt care that much. To a bit. Maybe if it was relevant to what i was exploring so there is nobody who comes to mind, once upon a time i thought it wasnt going to be a biography exactly but Something Like a biography about george sorry ross would be interesting. Sorry ross when right after the berlin wall fell and he was building his open Society Institutes all over Eastern Europe and russia, i thought there was a really good story to do about him i wrote a magazine piece and he was offended by it so he wouldnt let me do the book. But he rose what was it that gave you the incentive to want to do something on soros, not just those things he did in terms of an open society, the fact that my interest in him was offensive to him because of the nature of the interest was. This he clearly had this animal instinct in the markets which was unbelievable, unbelievably keene, like an animal in the jungle. Rose how was it expressed . In, you know investing in the marketplace, in his hedge fund life. He, you know, the killing he made on the british pound, for example. And he had been unbelievably successful in the marketplace, and then he, after the fact, erected this intellectual edifice to explain his success, which i thought had very little to do with his success, that but so he wanted to have a theory of why he was successful in the marketplace when i think