| Yeah, there are some shady dark pools and order types going around. In regards to money, I think that decimalization actually really hurt market makers. There has been massive consolidation in the HFT space with most players either going out of business or being acquired. Profits are way down and latency arbitrage is almost impossible nowadays without billions of dollars of trading infrastructure. Profits have dropped by something like 90% in the last 10 years and the super-normal profits now (after consolidation) are just "normal." The good thing about HFT is that with the right infrastructure, it's (almost) risk-free. The problem with HFT is that the returns don't compound, there's only a fixed amount of pennies that can be vacuumed up. This is in contrast with other non-HFT quant strategies, which can run tens or even sometimes hundreds of billions of dollars in capital and can make over 10% annually. The story with HFT is the story with any new market. Players get in, make a ton of money. More players get in, now they are making a little less money. Even more get in, and now they aren't making enough money. Then the people not making enough get bought up or go out of business. And now the equilibrium has been reached: everyone is making "normal" money and everybody forgets about them. And all of this is good, it's the natural market cycle. People like Elizabeth Warren were talking about how unfair HFT was blah blah, but now, no one cares. Fortunately, the entire cycle resolved before the government could get their sticky little fingers on it. |