Tantalizing, but too full of statements like "high frequency traders move so fast that regulators cannot keep up", which is nonsense. So HFT moves in milliseconds and regulators move in, what, months? (Worse, if you read The Big Short, or his editorial in NY Times).

The hint that someone is trying a denial of service attack is intriguing. A theory was proposed about how quotes were time-stamped as they exited a queue rather than when entering the queue, causing an unfortunate feedback situation.

So we are wondering if there is a connection between that and these patterns.

my guess is that the market looks like that all the time -- the things it describes sound like reasonable automated market-making strategies that people would try.

market making is certainly a job that needs doing, and high-frequency trading is a way that people can do it; like any system, there's some risk of a breakdown. it's a game like poker, where you've got to guess what the intentions of the other guy are.

honestly I'm not worried about the high-frequency traders, I'm worried about the longer term expectation that investors have, and about a general inbalance between capital that exists on paper and the ability of the system to put it to work