[relyks]

It technically helps increase market liquidity (enabling someone to easily sell or buy new positions) and there's research that it decreases the bid-ask spread, but I don't buy it. If you believe having a small portion of society be able to easily trade stocks, then yes, but imo, I'd say it generally doesn't have any value for society in general

[euroderf]

Seconding that. Nothing in this discussion convinces me that HFT is not simply a money-skimming operation.