> skim obscene profits off the top from institutions that make these large trades
It's not like in the pre-HFT days market makers would just obligingly fill institutions for whatever volume trades they wanted to execute, regardless of how ham-handedly they broadcast their intent into the market. Any estimate of "costs" to institutions from HFT needs to be measured not against some Platonic ideal scenario where market makers earn no profits, but rather against the old specialist system that it replaced. In which case I suspect the costs would come out quite a bit on the negative side of $0.
There are some practices in HFT like paying for privileged newswire access that could use some reform, but the best solution to this fragmentation issue is for large institutions to stop sending out their orders like it's the year 1995.
It's not like in the pre-HFT days market makers would just obligingly fill institutions for whatever volume trades they wanted to execute, regardless of how ham-handedly they broadcast their intent into the market. Any estimate of "costs" to institutions from HFT needs to be measured not against some Platonic ideal scenario where market makers earn no profits, but rather against the old specialist system that it replaced. In which case I suspect the costs would come out quite a bit on the negative side of $0.
There are some practices in HFT like paying for privileged newswire access that could use some reform, but the best solution to this fragmentation issue is for large institutions to stop sending out their orders like it's the year 1995.