HFT mocks the true essence of trading. That of buying or selling goods or stocks because you see the intrinsic value and care to &quot;invest&quot; in them. This used to give us a real picture of the public sentiment for those companies or commodities.<p>HFT on the other hand is the brutal unempathetic cousin of intra-day trading that completely takes the human element out of the picture. Stocks are bought and sold in micro seconds, creating an unsustainable and unlevel playing field for the real humans in markets.<p>To this day, I fail to see how was this even allowed by regulators. HFT systems should be pitted against other HFT systems on newly created indexes or an alternative system, where humans are not allowed to trade for their own benefit. The current ecosystem is just unsustainable.