I'd prefer to trade stocks than Bitcoin/Altcoin. I have a trading bot for that & it used to work well with some market volatility, but it's a waste when the market's sideways.
I have used Sterling trading software and I was able to 'gap trade', or capture market swings with simple (Ctrl + B, or Ctrl + S), which you can't if you are using a brokerage account with your bank.
If you are going to use HFT trading, you must consider a superb internet connection (what if you get locked in a trade and your home internet dies) and never Short sell, or else it would wipe out your account.
For level2 activity you can also use : freestockcharts.com and they are amazing.
You may be able to pry a few pennies from them while they are dealing with larger orders, but you ain't going to beat that set up.
Anecdotes to the contrary (I made money doing it!) are meaningless without an accompanying risk analysis. You can sometimes gamble a winning a penny vs losing a dime and win. That doesn't mean the expected value is positive, regardless of the results of some short term run.
If I had software that could beat the HFT firms I wouldn't be selling it to low-level consumers, I'd be either beating them at their own game or selling it to them for the hundreds of millions to billions that it was worth.
As /u/RogerL mentioned, the infrastructure speed and access time are critical factors in succeeding with HFT. It is a costly endeavor outside the reach of majority of traders.
Algorithmic Trading can be done by anyone who can research and identify inefficiencies and implement strategies to exploit such inefficiencies. Typical such opportunities are short-term so you have to constantly develop new ones and refine old ones and know when the old ones are no longer working.
> I have a trading bot for that & it used to work well with some market volatility, but it's a waste when the market's sideways.
Rising tide raises all boats. Even a monkey throwing darts on a list of stocks can do well in rising markets. No one strategy works across all phases of market.