“Very short time-frames for establishing and liquidating positions.” strait from the SEC: https://www.sec.gov/marketstructure/research/hft_lit_review_...
Now it’s true an individual stock may only see 5 trades per day from a HFT algo, but theirs more than just one stock. The larger pool of money sitting around waiting for those 5 trades the lower your ROI. So, the obvious strategy is to reuse the same pool of money to back multiple different strategies.