Market makers don’t directly participate directly in the price discovery process. A high frequency trader, or any sort of market maker, has no opinion or information on whether Apple is a valuable company.
Further buying or selling within the spread does not automatically make money it's as there is risk which that article mostly ignores.
Keep reading. I (it's my blog) explain how market makers reduce the transaction costs for speculators, allowing them to more efficiently discover prices.
Similarly, network engineers don't gather news, but they still help the news get out.
It assumes that they need to trade right now and sell right now which is a false assumption. As to what network engenders do, if you want to really stretch thinks Starbucks barista's aid price discovery by keeping people awake but that's a meaningless definition.
PS: There was a while that I accepted the idea, but consider what happens if bill gates wanted to sell 10 billion in Microsoft stock HFT will be willing to pick up quite a bit, but vary seen there will try and get rid of the stock and the net effect is they don't hold the stock for long enough to matter. Because, really what they do is time shifting not price discovery. Further the reason it works is buy and sell orders without attached prices which makes selling 1/10th of a second sooner cost you money.
Anyone who doesn't need to trade right now is free to place ALO orders, not cross the spread, and collect a few fractions of a cent in rebates. The fact that most traders choose not to get paid to do this should suggest to you that maybe you are incorrect about the need to trade right now.
I have no idea what you are talking about with "buy and sell orders without attached prices" (market orders?). You are correct that HFTs probably do not provide enough liquidity for Bill Gates to immediately liquidate his entire portfolio. So what?
Market makers don’t directly participate directly in the price discovery process. A high frequency trader, or any sort of market maker, has no opinion or information on whether Apple is a valuable company.
Further buying or selling within the spread does not automatically make money it's as there is risk which that article mostly ignores.