Not correct. Buying at the bid/selling at the offer is perfectly legitimate. What needs to be abolished is sub-pennying, simple as that. In order to restore fair and equitable markets the following has to be re-instated:
1) There is a minimum tick size for every stock and nobody can get filled or trade or show prices at tick sizes smaller than the official tick size. I am of course in favor of removing minimum tick sizes altogether but then everybody must be able to show prices at sub penny price levels, not just limited market participants.
2) Any and all orders that are filled in an official market need to be shown to the market at large. It cannot be that an order is filled that has never been shown to the general market. If The market is 100.01/100.04 then the tape should NEVER print anything in between unless such order was shown to the market at large, even if it was shown just for milliseconds and another algo took the other side of the order. Optimally no dark pools or OTC markets in listed and regulated securities should even exist, but if they exist (and obviously they do exist) then market participants there can play the way they want but if they trade at the official exchange then they must adhere to point 1 and 2 above.
If that was guaranteed then we would have again fair markets that afford equal opportunities to every investor/trader. The current market should not even pride itself to call itself market because its a rigged game controlled by powerful lobbyists.
I think we will get there for three reasons: a) The hft algo market is getting so overcrowded that most strategies witness huge performance degradation (I get 1-2 phone calls a day from head hunters and hedge funds who are very "keen" on getting into fx hft space simply for the above reasons, most are highly dishonest in masking their intention to only harvest trading strategies by telling prospective PMs they want to hire and diversify their investments). Soon hft will not be profitable enough anymore to justify the risk taken. b) The regulatory pendulum is swinging in more and more markets towards implementing transaction "taxes", in many markets they already exist for a long time, such as in most Asian markets (HK, Korea, Singapore,...), UK, and others. c) Retail short term traders are getting crowded out of stock markets. Those are the bread and butter for many smaller brokerages and they realize that hft diminishes their business model from both ends, b) and c). We have already witnessed a huge push into fx and futures markets by retail over the past 10 years and it will only continue until those who feed off retail the most are willing to switch camps.
Until then there is not much you can do about it, because this world is simply controlled by money and greed, and as long as politicians can stuff their pockets with campaign contributions (aka, bribes) by powerful lobby groups nothing is gonna change. Nobody wants to cut off their own hands. Sad but this is just the way life works.
Quote from Random.Capital:
If you really wanted the stock, you could have just hit the offer.
If you're worried about the one penny difference, then you're complaining that HFT/internalization/etc is doing to you what you're trying to do to (even) slower retail.