Yes, the cost is very high. But the cost of an good software engineer at Google, Facebook or another top tier firm is also very high. However, when Google buys

Yes, the cost is very high. But the cost of an good software engineer at Google, Facebook or another top tier firm is also very high. However, when Google buys a WAN link from NYC to CHI, they pay $XX dollars because they don't care about the latency too much. When a HFT buys that same link, they'll spend three times that much just to get a link that is a few milliseconds faster. Also, the colocation costs at the major exchanges (NASDAQ, NYSE, CBOE) are insane. A cabinet in one of those data centers can be 3x as much as a cabinet somewhere else. I guess what I'm saying is there are a lot things in the HFT world where you have to spend a lot more money than you would if you were doing similar amounts of work at any other tech firm.