Average numbers for Goldman, or any of its competitors, are completely skewed by the executives' bonuses. Try looking at median numbers, they are nowhere near as pretty.
Lots of folks think/believe/hope they can thrive by "risking one tick to make two"... so penny and sub-penny issues apparently are relevant to them. That's waaayyy too manic for me, but each to his own.
Lol, you don't even have any idea the amount of (insane) hours a surgeon has to work just to make $500k. And after that, he doesn't even have time left to himself to spend that money!
I wondering where in the SEC's regulation specifies that this is illegal. It's also hard to prove that someone cancels an order to manipulate the market. Who hasn't ever canceled an order? I'm not saying I condone this, but I'm not bothered by matters of a penny because as a retail trader there is no way I can compete at a fraction of a second.
When you consider a career path you should also take into account that most banking careers are short. Few people stay in the front office beyond early 30s. In Goldman median time in employment is about 2 years.
Section 747 specifically deals with "spoofing" and it is 100% illegal, now whether you care about pennies or not is not the issue, you either trade by the rules or you don't. Just because you have an amazingly fast system does not mean you can now place thousands of fake bids and offers.
There is no such thing as 'fake bids and offers', only bids and offers which have very short life spans, if someone places an order on the books, HFT or otherwise, they are opening themselves up to be filled against. Call a spade a spade, people don't like short lifespan orders, but there is nothing 'fake' about them.
The exchanges don't ban heavy cancelling... they each set a ratio of fills: cancels which, as long as the HFT firm stays under, is okay. Technically you're not supposed to prop the market up with a fake bid and then cancel it, but from my observations this is not what HFT primarily does.