if you want to play in HFT you want 1) wicked chops 2) collocation with exchange computers to pick up nickels faster than anyone else (was going to say sub-mill

if you want to play in HFT you want 1) wicked chops 2) collocation with exchange computers to pick up nickels faster than anyone else (was going to say sub-millisecond but my knowledge is not that granular) 3) access to historical tick data to analyze, which is expensive to subscribe to and manage (was going to say petabytes but my knowledge is not that granular) The way to think of a big part of HFT is really just automating the old function of market-making, adjusting the bid-ask on many securities to keep things in line. In the old days if you wanted to trade, you called a broker who took it off for a price, the bid-ask, and you tried not go get ripped off too much. Now institutions who want to trade look for ways to feed them into the maw of HFT without getting ripped off too much, and HFTs try to figure out how to get as much of a bid-ask as possible. Surely the biggest consumers of processing power are the data centers of Google, Amazon etc... Places like Goldman have sizable clouds but I don't think they compete yet.