Hsk17 is in fact quite correct and you sir cannot be. There are only two ways to "peak at the future prices." Either your computer is faster than everyone elses, in which case the price reaches your logic/screen faster (if you call this cheating... umm... I don't know what to say to you) OR what some exchanges offer is called "flashing."
First thing about flashing, not all exchanges offer it. In fact America's largest futures/options exchange (think crude oil, corn, carbon credits) does NOT offer any form of flashing. As for the exchanges that do offer flashing, it is simply an added service that any of their clients can sign up for. It is a special high speed connection that, if your firm has the technology to handle it, allows you to see orders as closely as possible to when the exchange receives them. This is not cheating, anyone can do it, you just need to have the funds to support the required technologies. No doubt if you know what you are doing you can get those technologies relatively cheap (likely a special NIC w/ whatever hardware can support it (linux!)).
As for risk being related to holding time, that is just wrong. Risk is generally considered in terms of how far can a price go in a given amount of time. An option contract that is farther out (read: longer potential holding time) will cost more due to the increased chance of volatility (read: price change, up or down, good or bad) through that longer period. Thus more time = more risk, as represented by the higher price of a longer contract.
As for what wallstreet can and can't afford, sure, there are imbalances in our economic system that allows certain industries to work with more money than they should. However imbalance usually comes from the use of force against one group to make them do something they wouldn't normally do, thus giving someone more favor (money) and perhaps creating an entire industry that simply shouldn't exist. I urge you to consider my proposition; Any time you see trading in a brand new high volume industry you should not say "trading is bad, look at this false industry" but you should instead say "what is the industry that utilizes this trading from the buy side." That is, who uses this type of trading for their actual business, as a client, not a trader.
See when an exchange offers traders to trade something like corn futures contracts, that means there are people out there (real, hard working people) who benefit from entering said contracts to mitigate price risk. The ability to mitigate price risk allows seasonally impacted industries to average out their costs and provide more stable prices to their consumers. Once this need for a contractual service exists it is the exchange who goes out to market makers (a type of trader) and says "hey, we have people trading, we need you to guarantee them realistic and competitive prices to trade at." They go out to brokerages (not really considered 'traders' but they do trade) and say "hey, we have products and if you bring us clients you can charge them fees for the complex task of processing, placing, and managing orders on our exchange." Market makers are speculators and there are many other types of speculators of which some may or may not be HFTs. If HFTs were harming the market for other brokers or speculators then the exchange would simply slow down their transaction rate (which would be business suicide) and even this would not stop the HFT market. That is, you will still want to have the fastest reaction time to market events possible and you can likely game transaction rate limiting systems as well.
Either way, it's just competition, and if it interfered the exchanges would not allow it.
