Ann: Managing Director and CEO Transition, page-252

If they are good at it – and like anything else, their competence will vary at an individual level – it is largely due to the advantages institutions have over retail. As you know, these include having access to more information, and being able to move prices around through buying and selling (short, or otherwise) in volumes (of trades, and of shares) that retail cannot match, using their ever-present HFT bots. When you boil it down, a lot of what they do simply amounts to trying to trick retail investors, and relies on algorithms that they didn't write.