I am not sure if anyone really understands the situation the marekt is in right now. Due to the microstructure..it is at risk of literally imploding which means that millions of people will have no real way to create wealth slowly. Now it may sound far fetched. But if you want to limit the elite. The have's from the have not's and you want to basically freeze time (money wise). then you kill the stock market and you kill competition and you kill wealth appreciation logn term by those who can only make large sums by slowly investing. I believe HFT and algo's are doing just this very thing and the creators may not even undeerstand it at this point. But, if you were programmed to use artificial intelligence and machine learning and you were told. at any cost to secure profit and monopolize the market then you would have a master plan you would carry out that would "end or win" the game. If this is a "game" tot eh algo's then winning would mean having the most money and shutting down the game..otherwise it never ends and you keep working towards an unachievable goal. If you are A.I. or even human you can realize that if you hut down the market or get others to not invest and during the process you make a killing then in the end you have ULTIMATELY won. OR if the Government or the fed wanted to RESET the usa economically or it's currency issues then a complete collapse of the market with a blame on recession and massive flash crashes would do the trick. Don;t you think it is suspect that they sec cftc really don't know what caused all fo the flash crashes.. HOGWASH. anyway I do not spoof and my point is the algo's are spoofing, layering, and creating moentum ignition a lot whihc are all illegal and disruptive but since algo cod eis considered INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY the sec and the cftc have never been legally allowed to pry into them!! so we human retail investors need to get smart and make it while we can and make it difficult for the algos to GAME US all the time. Placing and cancelling orders is not illegal.