| > I'd say you don't really understand what you're critiquing I'd say that you are assuming that optimizing for price is good, and presupposing how a market should be judged. Cheaper is good when it represents new innovation, less energy waste, and similar improvements. Cheaper can also mean cuts to wages and jobs, or a reduction in quality. > There's absolutely nothing wrong with short selling Leverage can be used for good, and sometimes it's used irresponsibly. As this thread's article demonstrates, short selling also creates systemic risk. > trades used to cost way more due to wall street middle men taking a big cut of every trade Eliminating middlemen and/or reducing transaction overhead costs do not require high frequency. You're seeing effects of technological improvements and better regulations. The same improvements also benefit "slow" trading. > chart patterns > getting rich with strategies as stupid simple as buy the 10 day high and sell the 10 day low "Buy low, sell high." is the foundation of any successful trading strategy. HFT (when successful) is literally the same thing at much shorter time scales and improved heuristics. Machine learning can probably provide more detailed at a much finer-grain than a simple 10 day sliding window. Again, this does not require high speed. > HFT is a sign of a healthy free market It tells you little about the health of the market; HFT is a sign of a market uses short-term transaction ordering heavily when reconciling trades. It's entirely possible to have a healthy market batched trades that all execute at the same unified price. |
No, capitalism assumes that. HFT traders offer a product to the free market, they sell liquidity and they do it cheaper than their old school competition, there are willing buyers, that is the only justification they require to exist.
> Leverage can be used for good, and sometimes it's used irresponsibly. As this thread's article demonstrates, short selling also creates systemic risk.
Leverage and short selling are different issues, that leverage can be dangerous is not a valid critique of short selling, you're trying to move the goalpost, this is a fallacious argument.
> Eliminating middlemen and/or reducing transaction overhead costs do not require high frequency.
No one said it did, however HFT does do that, which is what was claimed, so again, a fallacious and baseless critique.
> "Buy low, sell high." is the foundation of any successful trading strategy. HFT (when successful) is literally the same thing at much shorter time scales and improved heuristics. Machine learning can probably provide more detailed at a much finer-grain than a simple 10 day sliding window. Again, this does not require high speed.
Again, baseless critique, no one said it required HFT. HFT trading sells liquidity cheaper than those old school simple traders, the market chose HFT.
Do you have any actual critique of HFT, or do you simply presume it's bad and then employ fallacious arguments that X doesn't require HFT? You quite literally have added nothing to the conversation. That it's possible to have a healthy market without HFT is irrelevant, it asserts HFT is bad without evidence, HFT traders have the same right to trade that anyone else does, you don't just get to ban them because you don't like them without cause. That something still works without HFT is not evidence against HFT any more than the fact that I can still travel without a car is evidence against cars.