Recently, I find I've forced out of positions from price manipulations via HFTs intraday. Or, been entering positions I thought were good long setups when it was relaly HFTs battling it out.
Cheers

Can you give us an example or two?

Sure, at certain times with low volume stocks, I'll see a bid at 40c. I may put a bid at 41 (even with 10 shares sometimes), and then the bid goes to 42, then I go to 43, and it goes to 44, and so on. I did this to see if there was really an algorithm at play and I didn't have to risk that much money. Eventually, it got to 75c before I was filled. This was just an experiment and I risked $2 to see how price behaved.

But it's not refusal to get filled that's annoying. Many times I'll backtest certain setups, and they work out reasonably well. Then when I trade these setups live (with lower volume stocks), I put an limit buy order in and get filled. The stock trades immediately lower, lower, and lower, until finally I hit out. 5-30min later the stocks is 1-2 points higher than when I bought it. I look at the volume, it doesn't show any significant buying whatsoever. In some cases, there's practically 0 volume from where I bought and hit out. This seems to be a reoccurring theme especially with the lower volume stocks.

For example, with CSCO, I find it behaves much better. The bids are real, and they don't tend to lift on and off within a microseconds. And by low volume, I mean it trades less than 60k shares per 5min

Seems that HFT gets the finger pointed at it for just about every adverse move in any traders experience these days. If you think about it, if HFT were really trying to hit traders for a few extra hundredths on the bid/offer then there should be as many traders beneficially assisted as there are those adversely impacted.

HFT in essence is a set of front-running techniques used to gazump large orders which under current SEC regs must be split and met at best price across all exchanges trading the underlying. In the extremely low probability event of you choosing to place your trade at exactly the same time as an institutional sized package hits the market, then yes, you can probably claim to have been done in by an HFT algo. But the probabilities are low and you can take solace in the fact that you are just as likely to get a lift as a hit on that basis, plus, it wasn't aimed at you personally.

It’s equally unlikely your broker will be playing with the bid/offer just for your 10 shares as he will be exposing himself to a counter move with real size if he’s way out of whack, he’ll get seriously and quickly arbed. It just wouldn’t pay him to do it.

But your hypothesis that trading higher liquidity instruments offers a better deal is generally correct.