The 'flash crash' suspect is a far cry from the flash boys on Wall Street
Navinder Singh Sarao, whose trading is said to have wiped a trillion dollars of value from stocks in 2010, is not the usual Wall Street bad boy
Everybody noticed the lanky Londoner when he removed his leather jacket, snapped on noise-reduction headphones and took a seat in front of his three screens.
Not because "Nav", as he was known, made a scene - a fellow trader called him distant. The 30 or so who toiled in the nondescript building in a southwest London suburb watched his every move because he did what they desperately wished they could: make a pot of money.
Now, six years after the 36-year-old left the firm where he worked for most of his 20s, his status has been secured: by US claims that he helped cause what came to be known as the flash crash.
That 2010 panic briefly wiped more than a trillion dollars of value from stocks around the world, exposed the vulnerability of markets and raised questions about the effectiveness of regulators. Sarao's arrest on Tuesday didn't do much to address lingering concerns.
"To say it's one guy who caused this is ludicrous," said Remco Lenterman, managing director at market maker IMC Financial Markets in Amsterdam. "To say that it contributed, that makes more sense. Many factors contributed."