On a recent episode of The Drift, the weekly markets show hosted by thinkorswim and tastytrade founder Tom Sosnoff and trader Adam Mesh, Sosnoff pushed back on the common retail assumption that high-frequency trading is the enemy of individual investors. Asked about traders essentially competing against AI and computer-driven trading, Sosnoff argued that the framing itself is off. In his view, retail investors are conflating two very different activities. "Computer trading is not, has never been your counterparty. Let's be very clear about this. Computer trading has existed forever, but computer trading is a form of index or basis arbitrage. And it's much more on the prop business. It's not counterparty to customer trades." Sosnoff then drew a sharp distinction between prop-desk algorithmic trading and the high-frequency market makers who actually sit on the other side of retail orders. "Customer trades, the counterparty to customer trades, is a high frequency environment. The high fre...