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A couple of hedge fund managers shorting GME may have gotten kicked in the nuts, but Wall Street as a whole is laughing all the way to the bank. A friend of mine working at a high-frequency trading co says 2020 was their best year ever and by a long shot, because volatility plus clueless retail investors (yes, that means you, /r/wsb'ers YOLOing on Robinhood) means arbitrage and frontrunning rakes in money.

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If only regulators would get rid of useless parasites and criminals like high frequency traders.

I can't tell if this is in jest... if you're actually interested, the role of HFT in markets is hotly debated. The HFT side argues that they improve markets by providing liquidity - and that's true to an extant, spreads have narrowed drastically over time. And yes, there is the opposite side arguing they are purely "parasites", and exchanges like LTSE have been built specifically to counter HFT (Flash Boys, etc.)

Perhaps I don't like the word "criminals" being thrown around so loosely.

The comment I'm replying to uses the word frontrunning to describe their activity. Frontrunning is a crime. Hardly a loose use of the word to describe the perpetrators of crime as criminals.

S&P 500 returned 18.4% in 2020. Congratulations to your friend.

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