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I have no opinion on whether more liquidity and "lowering the cost of trading" is a net good or bad. On the one hand it means less profit for market makers and a slightly lower price to buy stocks. On the other it means more volatility when algorithms mess up.

HFT doesn't matter at all to long and medium term investors that actually provide the value in the stock market(which is providing capital to help grow companies).

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Long and Medium term investors should be investing broadly across the entire market.

Just a decade ago you needed to buy into a mutual fund and pay sales loads and expense ratios over 1%.

Now, you can own an ETF containing a piece of each of the Fortune 500 companies for an expense ratio < 0.1% because spreads in those 500 companies are narrow and trade constantly.

Medium term and long term investors love HFT because it saves them 0.9% in yearly expenses. If you've got 100k invested in SPY instead of some Fidelity fund, HFT is saving you $900 a year.

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