So where the hell were these HFT bandits who triumphantly claim they merely "provide liquidity" on Thursday when the Dow dropped 1000 points? It was anything but! Personally, this damn market that has been rising since last March deserves a good spanking but not like this. This is simply a display of a completely broken (read: fucked up) system. Probably the folks at Zero Hedge will justify this better than this noob: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/day-market-almost-died-courtesy-high-frequency-trading
they are market makers and do provide intra-day liquidity. liquidity mean you can buy or sell a large amount of money. these guys don't provide price support or have any stock inventory . meaning if the price crashes, they ain't going to be on the bid..they shut down their computers no bid and no ask. you would have no volume withouth the HFT or market makers. some large hedge fund or fund unloaded 15 billion into market sell orders which under normal circumstance would have been block. these HFT and market makers prop traders are highly leveraged so anyone who got creamed would and didn't have mechanical stops would have been wiped out and owe money no market maker would buy 100 million dollar worth of stock in a market sell order.they don't have that kind of cash...these market makers HFT deal make most of their money from are for small investors and traders.
Better yet, here is a nice definition of HFT.. my a$$, the amount of bs here is awesome. Do they really think they can convince HFT is trading on an iphone. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/37019143#37019143