There is no doubts in my mind that something is nor right with...

There is no doubts in my mind that something is nor right with the market and that our Regulators are sitting on their hands while knowing what is going on.

But IMO there is a way that prevents you (Anyone) to get caught out. And that is not to put a buy or sell bid at market. You can DYOR but, IMO, when one is putting a buy or sell order at market, that is when the troubles can start and allow the HFT to manipulate the bid price against you, in either way.

When you want to either buy or sell, just enter the price that you are prepared to either pay or accept for your shares, and leave it to that. There is nothing that the HFT can do and make any money out of your order as you stated at what price you are prepared and willing to trade.

There is another issue that has me more concerned though and well worth investigating by the Regulators. I think that the following is more important than the few pennies that the HFT traders are making on a single trade.

And this is where these HFT traders can manipulate the market easier than anyone else while, according to our Regulators, it is all above board or that they prefer to be looking the other way.

I can give you an example of this factor when, the other day, I put an order to buy a certain amount of shares in a company which I was under the impression that it was too cheap to resist.

I noticed that on the sell bid side there was an amount of shares close to 100k at a certain price so I pushed my buy bid at that price for the total amount of shares appearing on the screen.

What happened next, was that I only bought a small amount of those shares while the rest of them disappeared in the never never and the rest of my buy order was left standing and uncovered.

I then looked in the trades order for the day and no one else bough those shares before me, but they appeared instead within the next level of sell order.
Even blind Freddie could see that all they wanted from me, was for me to pay more for the shares I wanted to buy. If I was to have lodged my buy order at market instead, and not at set price, my order would have been filled at the next level and at a higher price.

That is what I would call manipulation. By entering dummy orders either on the buy or selling sides, and then with the advantage of the HFT pulling those orders before someone will take them out, IMO that is manipulating the market by giving a false impression of what is going on.

IMO the few pennies that the HFT traders can make by trading faster than you or anyone else, can be corrected a lot easier than what the capping of shares and then pulling them, can.

DYOR!!