lol, what diff does it make if there is only ONE front running firm , if they are HALF the volume. you are a poser.
http://www.foxbusiness.com/industri...-against-barclays-over-dark-pool-sources-say/ told ya so. again. the pikers here can resume their nick changing ways . why would they want to continue to use a disgraced , outed moniker? 16,000+ posts and still here, mofo
You're confusing 1) electronic markets and 2) algorithms (algos) with HFT's. HFT's are neither 1 or 2, but they need both to run their operation, along with co-location or geo-physical proximity as you pointed out. HFT's are firms holding positions for a few microseconds on average and performing hundreds, if not thousands of trades, per minute. They gain an advantage by 1) exploiting data feed speed and 2) trading venues' Order Types (which are not accessible thru most online retail brokers). Some of their abuses include using latency arbitrage (flashboy's scenario); using "spam and cancel" tactics for snooping and probing the market; using "hide and light" to slide a tick and front run other participants; etc. They also like to harvest exchange rebates (payment for order flow). And when the market moves against them they can pull their bids and offers before getting filled, cancelling ahead of sweeps. Yeah, they're the slick masters of the order book, and plain evil. The reason we have narrow spreads is not because of HFT's, but because we have electronic markets, making all the human power required to process orders irrelevant and thus reducing the cost of trading.