This is absurd reasoning. It's like saying Apple has such large profit margins on their iPhones that they must be either cooking their books or in cahoots with someone somewhere. It's just a phone! How hard is it for a competitor to make a comparable phone?! They've had 15 years to copy them!
> I honestly can't name any investment firm with double digit returns YoY for more than a decade or two that doesn't have bodies in the closet.
It's clear you have literally zero idea what HFT actually does, yet you don't hesitate to call them frauds. HFT firms do not "invest" like traditional investment firms or hedge funds. They provide liquidity and sometimes take liquidity but only tend to hold those positions for seconds or minutes. At the end of every day, most HFT firms have zero position (some might hold some spreads or hedged positions overnight but those are generally less risky).
> why aren't large HFTs with high overheads being eaten alive as technology decentralizes access to trading?
HFT firms don't compete against each other on pure "technology", but more so on mathematical models or what you could call intelligence. Intelligence is not simply arbitraged away over time, although it does happen to some extent. My comment earlier discusses some of this [0]. Technology has little to do with their success. By the same reasoning, why hasn't Apple's margins been eaten over time?
> Fraud is the simplest answer.
The ancient Greeks thought that Zeus was the simplest answer for lightning, but clearly we know that not to be the case.
> Time will tell.
We do not need time. We already know. That you personally don't know doesn't change the fact that nothing illegal or wrong is going on.
