No one said that this was your full-time job. No one said that it has to be HFT either. Algorithms identify good trades at 4:01pm and you buy the next day. And no one is saying that you have to trade everyday.
Exactly. Plus let's remember you are adding nothing to life here. All you are doing is collecting 30k off other people with a slightly less optimal "strategy" than you.
And no I don't believe these people are "adding liquidity and assisting price discovery".
to the reply as I can't post as HN censors detractors of big finance:
I don't believe the benefits of liquidity added by HFT are worth the enormous costs firms sink into it.
>> And no I don't believe these people are "adding liquidity and assisting price discovery".
The nice thing about reality is that it remains even when your belief persists against it.
In large-cap stocks during rising markets, high frequency trading does improve liquidity[1]. While the effect may not be as prevalent during a downturn and it may not impact smaller stocks as much, I'd like to see your evidence that it actively harms the market or that the practice is vapid and produces nothing of value.
Or is that just a statement you made because it nicely aligns with your political conception of Wall St?
EDIT: It helps to point out that "algorithmic trading" and "high frequency trading" are not at all the same thing, especially as these terms are usually conflated on HN. An algorithmic trading system does not necessarily need to trade at high frequency. Some algorithmic trading systems make trades in intervals of days or weeks, not seconds or milliseconds. The paper cited here describes the market-making activities of what is traditionally called high frequency trading and the benefits it has over human brokers of the past, but it uses the umbrella term "algorithmic trading."
EDIT 2: The parent comment responded to this one by editing his original one, because "HN censors detractors of big finance." You also claimed you don't believe that the liquidity provided by HFT is worth the capital that large firms dump into it.
In 2013 the entire HFT industry made about $1B, down from $5B in 2009[2]. HFT is not a large industry. It is eating much of Wall Street's traditional market-making inefficiencies, which is why it is widely disliked, but it is not "big finance." Big Finance is generally opposed to HFT.
You still haven't provided evidence or numbers to prove or even quantify what you're claiming. Are you saying HFT is not worth the investment to firms, or are you saying it isn't providing some vague "value to society" relative to alternative uses of investor capital?
The first case is obviously nonsensical, as many firms generate profit using high frequency trading strategies. The second case is like saying we shouldn't do anything if it doesn't save impoverished children in Africa. The added liquidity has a material and beneficial impact on trading outcomes for buy-and-hold retail investors, which is shown in my first citation here. You have yet to satisfactorily refute this.
How about just making a transaction because you feel that you gain something from it? Does it need any other motivation? I mean, I buy food, go to a concert, rent a car, and buy a stock, not for the purpose of gifting something to society, but for my own sake.