HFT is just a technology for trading faster. It's not really all that much different from the open outcry system it replaces; the big change is traders feel eac

HFT is just a technology for trading faster. It's not really all that much different from the open outcry system it replaces; the big change is traders feel each other out using computers rather than by waggling their fingers at each other. Access to the market is probably more equitable now than it used to be, since you can give more people direct access to the markets with electronic links. With pit trading, you were limited by the physical size of the pit. If you're going to give people electronic access to the markets, there's not really any sense in saying they aren't allowed to use whatever computer technology they see fit to trade with that access, as long as they aren't actually manipulating the market. As far as economic value, it has different uses to different players on the market. Speculators can take advantage of increasingly fleeting arbitrage opportunities, yes. But the flip side of that is that institutional investors can use it defensively, to make it harder to find and exploit those arbitrage opportunities. That basic game of cat-and-mouse has existed for centuries, and, here, almost 2 decades into the 21st century, it seems absurd to me to say that, of all the places people use technology to do things faster, nobody should be allowed to do it in this one particular case. Which when you get down to it, is essentially what people are suggesting when they say that high frequency trading is bad. If it stills seem unfair to you (and that's an entirely legitimate feeling), I'd submit that it isn't that that using technology is unfair in and of itself, so much as that technology has the potential to magnify the effects of unfairness that was already baked into the financial system to begin with.