Are you just some fatass in a chair bitching? Or do you have a real solid, informed complaint about HFT?
I ask this, as I worked in the algo trading industry for ten years on both the prop (HFT) side and the agency side, where I built tools to counteract HFT players. I recently left as the money dried up, while the hours didn't, and to be quite honest I just lost a lot of interest in the business.
There are problems with HFT activity, but I believe that overall, they have benefitted the retail investor. Since the rise of HFT and electronic markets, spreads have collapsed to be an insignificant cost of trading. HFT guys ate the lunch of market makers who used to have cushy little businesses and traders getting mid 6 to 7 figure bonuses. My first job involved automating those guys out of a job. Those guys used to legitimately front-run orders, anyone talking about HFT front running is either redefining the term, or doesn't know what they are talking about.
Guys with a speed advantage have always used that advantage to make money in the stock market. Whether it be guys with faster horses in the pre-railroad/telegraph era (supposedly the rothschilds made their fortune this way, buying up english bonds as they had news that a war had ended first), telephones ripping off bucket shops in the 1900's, SOES bandits in the 1980s, and now HFT today, this has always existed. All those guys who actually used to sit on the floor of the NYSE- why do you think they were there?- So they could trade on the news first (one quote from the book Market Wizards: "First its the floor traders, the next day its the dentists, then after that comes Joe Schmoe.")
The games that HFT guys are playing is generally sniping a penny here and there. As a retail investor who is buying and holding, their game has nothing to do with yours, and they have eaten the lunches of the market makers and brokers who used to rip you off.
Are there problems with HFT? Yeah- mainly that exchanges are developing order types exclusively for their use. The fact that they are acting like market makers by providing liquidity and squeezing the legit market makers, but once things start looking weird, pull out immediately (though after the flash crash, many of these guys started becoming legit market makers).
Net/net though, these guys are good for retail traders. If you disagree, come up with a good, specific, informed reason on how they are hurting you and your orders in the market. If you look at some of the major detractors of HFT like Joe Saluzzi, they are almost always from smaller niche firms who can not afford technology to adequately compete in an electronic world, and are getting squeezed out by the bulge bracket guys.
The HFT business is drying up as it is though. The arms race has put enough players on equal footing that the low hanging fruit is gone. The major banks have invested enough in their infra that they can't just be picked off by these guys anymore. This is good for the industry in my opinion, maybe the focus can go back to trading smarter, not just saving off ten microseconds on the slice time.