rkapoor

jmh530 Wrote:
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Front-running isn’t the same thing as HFT. You can
criticize front-running without criticizing HFT.
But you CAN criticize both. Sure, there can be front running without HFT, but HFT does enable faster front running.

If liquidity disappears and no one trades, then
the market won’t fall. It takes people wanting to
sell more than buy when liquidity dries up (no one
seems to are about liquidity drying up and the
market rising 100%, only falling 100%). I’m sorry,
but I don’t have much sympathy for the
panic-sellers. Anyway, if there are some prints
-20% down, that doesn’t mean that volume-weighted
prices for the day really changed much.

And what about stop-loss orders that are triggered. ZH has some good graphs of the volume pings that drop prices precipitously and the obvious market manipulation.
I think the decline in commission has more to do
with regulatory changes than the narrowing of
spreads.

  HFT has done nothing at all to
  help out retail investors and has merely cost
them
  millions if not tens of billions.

HFT would have to steal more money than the
narrowing of the spreads would have saved them.
I agree 100%, the answer is obvious.