Re:I am an HFT programmer (Score 1)

Thank you for initiating this fascinating topic. I apologize for the aggressive nature of some of the posts below and I hope people realize the opportunity you are offering them for learning. I am a small investor only, but have been intrigued by the occurence of "flash crashes" probably caused by these HFT programs. They seem to be getting very sophisticated and adaptive, I have a lot of questions I hope you can answer. 1) Do you know if your programs (or others) have caused these flash crashes? Is it a desired or undesired effect, if so? 2) Do your programs look/hunt for stop loss triggers? 3) Do your programs resist normal market conditions (price fix)? How do they do this, if so? 4) When graphed, the bid/ask prices migrate sometimes in "blocky" and sometimes "curvilinear" patterns (within milliseconds). Is this a programmer style or a function of market conditions, do you know? 5) Do your programs often compete directly with other algos? How do they find each other in these very short time frames, if so? 7) Can you explain the general mathematical principles of the algo(s) to a lay person?