"This may be a stretch. During the recent articles and comments about HFT it dawned on me that the HFT community, representing over 50% of trading volumes, had crossed a control threshold which theoretically could provide dominance enough to manipulate prices. I compared that to the crude oil market of the early 70's which saw the dominant producer, the U.S., lose pricing control to OPEC. Are we seeing history repeat itself, rhyme, or is this a completely different relationship?"

David Fuller's view Thanks for an interesting question. I think it is different in that the high-frequency people are just trying to make money, as are the rest of us. However, to the extent that their algorithms are programmed to do similar and very short-term trading, and because they have a faster reaction time, they certainly have the influence to muscle markets. We see this in the form of increased correlations and often greater intraday volatility.