In general the goal of trading is to know more than other traders. High frequency trading is knowing about recent trades sooner than others. That's where the p

In general the goal of trading is to know more than other traders. High frequency trading is knowing about recent trades sooner than others. That's where the profit comes in. I see a difference here to technical analysis. HFT clearly has a data edge over those who just look at historical trend lines. I think it's reasonable to say this isn't technical analysis. It's not the historical analysis that gives the edge. It's the extra knowledge they have that gives the edge. Technical analysis is very much rooted in purely the historical price. If you have a way to predict prices with more knowledge than just the historical price you're getting outside the realm of technical analysis and into the realm of plain regular analysis where you take as much knowledge as you possibly can about the stock and figure out the price based on that huge volume of knowledge. This is why technical analysis is dumb. It assumes all the knowledge is in the price already and there's no way for some investors to know more than others outside the scope of that. HFT is in fact a great counter to that. Some people know incoming trades before the rest of the market. That extra knowledge allows for vast profits.