Things are a bit cheaper. It's pretty diffuse, but then so are the supposed harms they perpetrate as well. HFT is realistically a tiny part of modern finance. Huge numbers of professional traders made in total much more money doing the same job before it was automated.
As I understand it, liquidity requires buyers, so middlemen (HFT) with a smaller spread than traditional brokers (because of speed and volume) might increase the number of buyers slightly. I'd like to see quantification for this oft-repeated claim of "increased liquidity", which seems fairly marginal at this point.
Strong disagree. Liquidity at the level of milliseconds means insider trading and other information disparity is more profitable and encourages people to make rash decisions on incomplete information rather than well informed decision.
I'd love go see any information that proves that trades at the millisecond level lead to measurable improvements over, say, trades executing once per hour.
They seem to lead to measurable improvements for HFT companies, who seem to benefit from incrementally faster information and execution, and high volume (which might be reduced if trades were hourly.)
It might be harder for HFT to make money if trades were processed in random order on the hour, though they would probably still have an edge.
Online games that care about fairness try not to turn into a competition for the lowest ping time.
Good outcomes for HFT companies doesn't mean good outcomes for the market.
The government abandoning free tax filing software is GREAT for Intuit - they make a lot of money off it. It's awful for the rest of the population and the country as a whole.
