Quote from TradingScrub:
stock777 has stated his stance multiple times. He's against:
1) Co-location
2) Sub-pennying
3) Unnecessary quote activity
My opinions:
1) Co-location does seem shady. It's technically not "front running" because they're acting on public information that they're just happening to see first. Still, the fact that the exchanges are selling a higher speed connection just feels like a slippery slope to me. Pay the exchange enough money and what else will they give you that no one else can afford? Who knows. Obviously there are always going to be discrepancies in how fast people send and receive data, so this will continually be an edge that is exploited, however, I'd at least like to see impartial exchanges. You want to set up shop in the next building over, fine, but stop lining the pockets of the exchanges and giving them incentives to find other "edges" that they can sell.
2) Sub-pennying needs to go, period. Getting a fill is atrocious and getting worse every day. Can't get filled without getting run over 90% of the time, even if you're the first one in at the best bid/offer. It benefits no one other than HFTs trying to profit by scooping up fills and churning rebates. I'd be willing to guess that a broker acting as an agent would probably round a customer's 15.999 priced order to 16 anyways.
3) Quote bombing seems like it needs to be reigned in. How is flooding the market with 5000 quotes a second not considered market manipulation? Sure, they can be hit/taken but most of the time their sole function is to lag up the system or make something look really strong or weak when there is no real intention to buy or sell.
I'm not against all algorithmic/high frequency trading. If you want to set up a program that is "if x, then y...if then z, then q" and run it on 1000 stocks that's fine. It is the picking of one stock and spamming it with a bunch of useless crap that needs to be eliminated.