Time was, this sort of high frequency trading would have any profits swamped by broker fees.
I see the question as an apple and oranges question.
High frequency traders use a completely different approach and technique then an individual investor. There’s no real way to compare them or their results.
But, I do believe an individual investor can hold up very well, despite having the high frequency traders in the mix.
It’s my opinion the key to successful investing is to first establish a “process”, a set of rules you invest by, and stick to those rules.
Then you have a starting point to see what works and what doesn’t, and you can then continue to fine tune your rules in order to improve the process.
I feel the product (investment) is pretty irrelevent, it’s the process that’s critical.
A simple example is when someone decides to go someplace...that’s the process. Wheather you use a car, walk, train or bus, etc (the product), will determine the efficiency of your process, but all modes of transportation may get you to your destination.
In investing, once you decide to invest and the structure of your investing technique (the process), then you can decide which product to use to fit your process.
Another example, suppose you decide to invest in technology. You can select from individual companies, mutual funds, ETF’s, options, etc, all of which will give you exposure to your desire of investing in technology. Which product you choose will be determined by your individual process.
A simple process, might be to divide your investment dollars into even pots. If you have $50,000 to invest for example, you might consider working with ten $5,000 pots. This gives you ten opportunities to succeed, rather then put all of your available funds into 1 or 2 investments.
Another part of your process may be to establish a rule that addresses “averaging down”, and when to apply it.
For example, if you allocate $5K to a technology investment and it goes down, you could have a rule that when it’s 10% or more down, to buy more of it, so when technology does go up, your investment has less to go before you are profitable.
Once you’ve established some rules, I’d suggest you back test them by using past charts and/or values of particular investments and see how you would have done.
This will allow you to check your process, before you invest any funds.
Hope this is of interest. Good luck all.