Sure, some HFT strats are locally encoded. But that’s not the only way to make money. If what you want to do is run arbitrage between different exchanges then b

Sure, some HFT strats are locally encoded. But that’s not the only way to make money. If what you want to do is run arbitrage between different exchanges then being faster than everyone else gives you an edge. You can take advantage of price differentials before anyone else does plus you get to front run news that has market impact round the world before anyone else can get their orders in. There are plenty of ways to make money if you’re faster than everyone else at getting data from exchange A to exchange B.