[bakhy]

An interesting contradiction appears here. On one hand, this increases market efficiency, or so we're told. On the other, we are also told that if a big pension fund wants to avoid being played like this, they should spend money on their own HFT equipment.

It seems there is only one clear winner here - the IT people making money off developing HFT systems.

[harryh]

Here's the chief executive of Vanguard (one of the largest investment management companies in the world) discussing how HFT has dramatically lowered their trading costs:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ff8c6486-cb37-11e3-ba95-00144...

Spreads used to be a quarter, and now they're a penny! That's a huge deal!