Considering any low-latency firm worth talking about will be able to afford viewing the full order book (which apparently you can get for $750 a month http://ww

Considering any low-latency firm worth talking about will be able to afford viewing the full order book (which apparently you can get for $750 a month http://www.nyxdata.com/arcabook http://www.nyxdata.com/arcabook) they don't need to create and withdraw trades constantly. They will however do this on dark pools, as dark pools specifically don't publish the order book. But no common investor will be trading on a dark pool, so this professor wont be able to "cheat" (with as much scare quotes as possible, as AndrewBissel and others discussed) them out of $377k. I don't know the regulations for dark pools so I can't say if this behavior violates them or not, but I'd assume not as dark pools are typically set up to thwart HFT so they'd pounce on any opportunity to keep them out.