What Exactly is "High Frequency" Trading?

I get emails from EFinancialCareers where I see the buzzword these days is "High Frequency" and many firms are looking for guys who can trade futures or FX with high freq.

Mind you I run my own trading business and I am not interested in working for anybody, but I'm curious what this is?

Is it a new word for intraday trading?
Is it something more sophisticated than intraday trading?

 

It's a buzz word for: "Come work at our prop firm and churn 100s of trades per day so we can make more commission money"

 

it means transferring wealth from you to ur broker

 

I can't speak for others but i think that high frequency trading is when orders are placed at an average rate of about 1 per second (but not necessarily sustained).

 

Doesn't it feel dignified and high-brow.

 

A trading workstation that has supplemented the QWERTY keyboard with an XBOX 360 game console as input device for stock orders.

 

This is just want brokers/CFMs want you to do, so instead of you becoming rich, you make them rich by generating boatloads of commissions.

 

when SP e-minis first came out there were guys that used game controllers to place there trades.

 

high frequency also implies that the trading is automated. some guy manually scalping for ticks has a different place in the industry.

 

Daytrading with a cooler name, mostly automated algo systems for larger firms, but daytrading all the same.