The ONLY reason HFT companies invest money to shave milliseconds is to have quicker access to orders that come into the system (this article elaborates: http://

The ONLY reason HFT companies invest money to shave milliseconds is to have quicker access to orders that come into the system (this article elaborates: http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2012/09/20/collocation-the-root-of-all-high-frequency-trading-evil/ http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2012/09/20/collocation-the-r...) It absolutely has nothing to do with reacting to real-world events. So if all activity were to take place at 1 second intervals (kind of like microprocessor clock) - their main advantage would go away.