When the time horizons of investment houses, hedge funds and quant specialty shops collapse to the millisecond and microsecond, they have already admitted that

When the time horizons of investment houses, hedge funds and quant specialty shops collapse to the millisecond and microsecond, they have already admitted that it is very hard to get an informational advantage in the market. Now an investment insider could do this in many ways: 1) working harder than other investors, 2) the misuse of nonpublic information through insider trading, 3) control of the treasury and the Fed and 4) HFT. In the case of HFT the informational advantage is detecting the state of market direction and executing trades a microsecond ahead of other investors. What we have here is money trading among the accounts of the investment elite.