> If they're truly pointless You've conflated "value to society" with "potential to make money". The two are unrelated. Dumping toxic waste in the river may

> If they're truly pointless You've conflated "value to society" with "potential to make money". The two are unrelated. Dumping toxic waste in the river may make money, but has negative societal value. Whatever societal value there was to faster trading was exceeded when trades could execute by the time your browser refreshed. Humans make financial decisions on the scale of minutes at fastest. At this point HFTs are still pursuing "making money" (and there may still be money to be made) but certainly not providing any societal value whatsoever; since they are stealing from the general public their societal value is strongly negative.