It's not the quantity of money extracted by HFT that's offensive; it's that the value is created by others, and they pick the pockets of actual value-generating market participants (some of whom are also algorithmic).
Except the NBBO was often stale (on purpose), so you were getting what was wrongly quoted as the NBBO by selling to an HFT who knew that the actual BBO was better, allowing them to arb on that knowledge. That said, a…
It's not the quantity of money extracted by HFT that's offensive; it's that the value is created by others, and they pick the pockets of actual value-generating market participants (some of whom are also algorithmic).
Except the NBBO was often stale (on purpose), so you were getting what was wrongly quoted as the NBBO by selling to an HFT who knew that the actual BBO was better, allowing them to arb on that knowledge. That said, a…