Apr 2014:Media coverage of High Freq Trading Stories after 'Flash Boys'

1. Trade Tactics: Slow vs. Speed [Feb 2014]
• Slow guy
• At IEX Trading Group Inc., all orders are slowed down by a fraction of a second after they enter the trading system, a tactic designed to prevent fleet-footed trading firms from racing ahead of orders from large institutions and driving up prices. Some proprietary-trading firms have been known to use their greater speed to change their bids and offers based on activity they notice on other trading venues and exchanges. By slowing things down, IEX hopes to put all traders on equal footing.
• Fast guy
• LeveL ATS, a dark pool. The company in October launched one of the industry's fastest matching engines connecting buyers and sellers. Its average speed for an order acknowledgment is below 60 microseconds, according to the company. The firm saw an average of 23.3 million shares traded a day in January, it said. Mr. Conary argues that the best way to avoid information leaking about an order, which could be taken advantage of by other traders, is being as fast as possible. LeveL is essentially fighting fire with fire: Its new matching engine was built by Thesys Technologies, the infrastructure arm of high-frequency trading firm Tradeworx Inc.
2. HFT in Australian Equity Exchanges.[ Apr 2014 ]
• “ASIC’s study into high frequency trading in the Australian markets found no fundamental deterioration of market quality, or systematic abuse that threatens the integrity of our market. Rather, we found the Australian market, which is less fragmented than the US, to be one of high quality and integrity,” the spokesperson said in a written response to questions from Business Insider.
• But profiting is neither abuse nor manipulation. If it consistently happens to one side, over another, due to some sort of advantage, it is just unfair.
3. Trading Profits of HFT shops. - An academic study [Apr 2014]
• "HFT traders do influence prices and outcomes for investors. A US research paper – The Trading Profits of High Frequency Traders [pdf], by Matthew Baron, Princeton University, Jonathan Brogaard, Foster School of Business, University of Washington and Andrei Kirilenko, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) – found that HFTs make on average $0.25 per trade. “This equates to $18,799 per day for each HFT in the August 2010 E-mini S&P 500 contract alone,” the paper said."
4. HFT Class Action Suit: City of Providence v. Bats Global Markets, Inc., et al. [Apr 2014]
• The City of Providence, RI, filed a putative class action complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, naming as defendants 16 different national securities exchanges, 12 major securities brokers, and 11 high-frequency trading (“HFT”) firms. The Plaintiff, in the case titled City of Providence v. BATS Global Markets Inc., et al., claims to represent every class of investor who bought or sold stock on a U.S. exchange from April 2009 through the present. The defendant class is only slightly smaller.   
• The allegations in the complaint are generally derivative of Michael Lewis’s recent book, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt, and the complaint repeatedly cites that publication. The Complaint alleges that the named HFT firms engaged in a number of trading behaviors that distorted stock markets and disadvantaged other market participants. The complaint alleges that the broker defendants allowed the HFT defendants access to their clients’ trade orders, which gave the HFT firms an informational advantage when trading against the brokers’ clients in the market. The complaint also alleges that the stock exchanges and alternate trading venues allowed HFT defendants to “co-locate” computer equipment, which allowed an informational advantage that enabled them to disadvantage other market participants.
• The Complaint alleges three counts, all under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934: (i) violation of the anti-fraud provisions of Section 10(b) and SEC Rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder; (ii) violation of Section 6(b) of the Act, as pertaining to registration of National Exchanges; and (iii) “insider trading” allegations for alleged violations of Section 20A of the Act.
5. HFT Book - Broken Markets 
• If you know little of financial markets you might find "Broken Markets" difficult to follow. But the Arnuk's and Saluzzi's thesis is not all that complex. The authors argue that our financial markets are thoroughly broken. They explain how stock exchanges have been taken over by high frequency traders who use sophisticated computer algorithms to scalp pennies off nearly every share traded. This has essentially transformed stock exchanges from facilitators of capital formation to arbitrage driven casinos that are rigged in favor of a class of speculators, the high frequency traders, who account for 50 to 70 percent of the volume traded on stock exchanges and, still more ominously, 80% of the profits.
6. HFT Book - Dark Pools a book featuring Haim Bodek
• Manipulating the order flow can be done by placing very low bids or very high offers for stock, which jump to the head of the order queue. When counterparties disappear as the computers cancel orders at superhuman speed, which often happens in turbulent markets, stocks can sell for one cent or $10,000 per share. Disappearing orders can be placed to test the market flow, and orders invisible to other participants in the market are also possible.
• As yet, this high-frequency trading has not led to anything like 1987's one-day 22 percent fall in the Dow Jones industrial average. But the occasional "flash crash" is alarming, as is the effect on large orders. These have become more expensive to execute, thanks to front-running computer-piranhas which move the price before big orders can be fully executed. Thus effective liquidity, the ability to buy and sell large institutional positions at close to the market price, has been greatly impeded - needless to say producing large additional profits for the algo traders.
• In response, big orders are increasingly broken into smaller bits to avoid algo-detection. Patterson cites research, commissioned by the Financial Times, according to which average order size declined by 67 percent on the New York Stock Exchange and by 68 percent on Nasdaq between 2005 and 2010
7. HFT - By Rishi K. Narang ; Another good writings on HFT ; From Quantitative perspective.
• Narang co-founded and was president of Tradeworx, Inc., a quantitative hedge fund manager, from 1999-2002
8. HFT trading shop - Meet Getco HFT Trading King. [ Aug 2009]
• "Traders at Getco, a private company with fewer than 250 employees, use powerful computers and algorithms to engage in high-frequency trading. "
• "They are probably the biggest market maker in the U.S. stock market," said Justin Schack, a vice president at Rosenblatt Securities Inc. who closely tracks high-frequency trading. A market maker is a firm that always stands ready to buy or sell a stock.