I mean that part is true and is exactly how markets are supposed to work, but the conclusions he draws are just bizarre. He makes the argument that HFT is the classic story of the fat cats stealing even more money from the little guys. But it couldn't be further from the truth. HFT's are helping the retail investors and actually "stealing" from the "fat cats" (institutional investors). Retail trading is now cheaper (free in a lot of cases), easier, and faster today than it has ever been, largely due to HFT firms and low-latency liquidity providing strategies. Also the ETF revolution and the massive democratization of financial asset classes and strategies is entirely predicated on HFT arbitrageurs.
But Lewis realized that the idea of HFT actually helping the little guys and hurting the big guys wouldn't be as sensationalist and provocative a story, so he decided to twist the facts to suit his own narrative.
Trading is cheap now... because it's all been computerised. The exchanges are digital - as soon as you can do all the transaction processing by computers there is an entire army of (expensive) clerks that can be laid off who used to handle the paper work. HFTs occupy a niche where they can exploit latency between exchanges for profit, with occasional other activities that were considered to be far more questionable when it was people playing those games, not algorithms.
>Trading is cheap now... because it's all been computerised.
This is true but the (fairly recent) move to essentially free trading for retail investors exists because firms will pay money to brokerages like Robinhood just to get the opportunity to trade with a pool of traders that are unsophisticated.
Paying for order flow doesn't fleece customers. Those customers are guaranteed to trade at the best price by NBBO.
So why would people pay for order flow? The people who do this are liquidity providers. What they want to do is sit there and buy a stock for $10 and sell it for $10.01 all day long. If they are buying and selling to you or me that is a great deal.
But what happens when BIG HEDGE FUND buys a shit ton of stock for $10. BIG HEDGE FUND probable knows the price is wrong at which the liquidity provider will sell a bunch of stock for 10.01 but then instead of being able to buy it for $10, all of a sudden has to buy it for higher. This is how liquidity providers can lose some of their profits.
So they pay brockerages like Robinhood that don't have big hedge funds as customers, not to fleece those customers but just to sell liquidity to them without worrying about getting picked off.
Just because things are computerized doesn't mean firms are willing to provide liquidity. The number of natural counter-parties at any one time are low, this is where HFT comes in, as market makers. Also if you look at the pricing mechanism of ETFs, they simply couldn't exist without HFT. Arbitrage is essential to ETFs, they simply wouldn't exist without low latency creation and destruction of shares.
Wait so you're saying that trade sniping is good for more than just the handful doing it because side effects? I've heard this pro-HFT argument before and always assumed it was biased BS.
But Lewis realized that the idea of HFT actually helping the little guys and hurting the big guys wouldn't be as sensationalist and provocative a story, so he decided to twist the facts to suit his own narrative.