[jarrett]

> It's completely fair to ask ourselves as a society if HFT groups are making a contribution to society that warrants the money they make.

An HFT once told me his company required a huge investment to operate. Besides the infrastructure costs, the company needed cash on hand for its buy orders. Given the small profit on each trade, it needed to do many, many trades. Which necessitated a lot of buy orders, and thus a lot of cash. When all was said and done, they didn't have a particularly high return on investment. The HFT didn't give me exact numbers, but he suggested that the ballpark ROI was commensurate with that of traditional brick-and-mortar businesses. (The ROI as he quoted it counted salaries and bonuses as part of the return, so those were not disguised as costs eating away the profits.)

If the HFT was telling me the truth, then it appears that at least his firm was providing a useful service and earning modest profits for doing so. Which would make his firm not so unusual in the business world. I have no inside knowledge of other HFT firms or other niches in the finance industry.