Yes, you do have that option. What you don't have is enough money to pay for it. Daytraders complaining about this is like mom & pop complaining their EOD quotes and day jobs don't let them keep up with daytraders.
If you or I engaged in the very same tactics that the largest I-banks engage in, we would be charged with fraud or market manipulation, it's as simple as that. I've got no problem with a complete free for all, which is basically your stance on every one of these issues. The only caveat is that when an institution fails as a result of engaging in highly leveraged trading, let them fail. If we did not encourage moral hazard, we would have never reached this point to begin with... It seems that once the juicier portions of derivatives trading was taken away, this HFT conundrum popped up..it's obviously no coincidence.
Same here...I'm basically in agreement with your stance, I just always make it clear that this "hybrid" sort of situation with which we argue for a "raw" capitilism needs to remove the government safety nets that completely skew the risk appetitite of banks, funds, corporations, etc, etc... Of course, it's a complicated argument as we'd never have seen the explosive derivatives growth of the past 10 years if the investment banks didn't already know they had the regulators captured.
Dubious situation. Hard to tell if the two traders were in the wrong. If they were using any illegal or questionably legal practices (akin to insider trading, quote stuffing, micro market manipulation, faking offers or generally gaming the spread etc) in order to take advantage of the market maker, they may be out of luck. From the sounds of it they targeted illiquid equities which Timber Hill was probably one of the only market makers on, which sucks for anyone who traded those products while the price was being pushed off fair value. Taking advantage of a short coming in market design feels morally analogous to insider trading to me, which in itself is a intrinsic unfix-able flaw in how the market operates (private information has value). Market makers are providing a service to help keep prices closer to fair value and tighten the spreads, it is probably not in the best interest of general market health to allow predatory practices which are specifically designed to take advantage of the risks or flaws MMs shoulder to provide us with those services. Nofear: Have you considered switching to a price-size priority exchange to make transmission speeds less of a factor for you?