I think it is odd to conflate &quot;bright people reducing the latency of trades&quot; with &quot;rigging and illegal activity&quot;. It seems to me that the former are rarely involved in the latter. One only needs to look at the libor cases, the FX fixing cases, or the gold fixing case.<p>I actually have a pet conspiracy theory that the articles about HFT are the result of lobbying on the part of banks. When I worked at a bank, I did see articles that were heavily influenced by employees of the bank. This influence was never nefarious, but I can see how a traditional trader&#x27;s biases may have lead to some of these HFT articles.<p>I rarely see articles about the evils of internalization, something that I strongly believe brings great harm to the markets. At the same time, I often see articles about how HFT takes advantage of the market and brings little benefit when I&#x27;ve made internal measurements that show just the opposite.<p>Of course none of the above is any sort of advice, and it&#x27;s probably appropriate for me to note that I&#x27;ve worked as trader at a bank and currently work as a trader at an HFT firm.