When humans did all the trading, it cost drastically more to trade, all that money went directly into the pockets of market insiders, and the whole market was crooked as a barrel of fishhooks. Google "odd eighths scandal".
You can't access this high speed trading. This is the toy of billionaires that can afford microwave link between New York and Chicago and have dedicated teams of FPGA developers to write high speed network stacks with trading logic embedded in them.
This is what the parent comment was talking about.
I have friends who work for such firm, both are FPGA designers, the company has a microwave link because speed of light in fiber is only 2/3c. Hundreds of people are working there for the sole benefit of the private owners.
It's possible I was confused.. I thought you were complaining about the inequality between high speed traders and mere humans clicking on web pages..
