HFT don&#x27;t provide liquidity for liquidity&#x27;s sake. They make markets more efficient, i.e. closer to the &quot;one true price&quot; (not necessarily the fair price, because there&#x27;s no way HFTs can outbid all the money collected in index&#x2F;sovereign founds or printed by central banks). They also reduce the spreads. For an ordinary person, they improve the markets.<p>The complaint about &quot;brilliant minds being wasted&quot; rings true, but you could make the same complaint about all of finance, and even most of Silicon Valley focused on extracting rents by serving ads - both are ultimately zero-sum games where insiders profit at the loss of society.<p>I think the ultimate problem is, there are no <i>real</i> problems that smart people could work on and make a contribution (and earn a good living) - or at least I don&#x27;t see any.