A farmer wanting to lock in a price for his corn trades with a HFT robot. The HFT robot gains a profit in expectation for taking on the risk, and the farmer is able to transfer the risk to the HFT robot. Much like an insurance company, we are willing to take risks for a price. The person on the other side of our trade is essentially paying a small fee to immediately convert their position into cash.
Estimated reading time: 4 min
Luca Hammer Little insights into high frequency trading. Makes sense. I still don't get the whole thing and assume there is also much going wrong.