I would say High Frequency Trading is, by definition, not about value, but about price only.
I guess I don't understand why this is necessarily true. ACN supposedly might have traded $.01 on the day of the flash crash (busted). It rallied back after the fact. It was likely undervalued at $.01. If such price behavior were to be an annual, monthly, daily, or hourly occurence, it'd probably still be considered a mispricing of the stock. My position is that "correct" valuation (if such a thing exists) and frequency are entirely independent.
I don't see how it's possible to assess the value of a company relative to market price fast enough to make even 10 trades a day.
i think you're making a comment about the speed at which valuation occurs. without sounding too obvious about the answer, computers are really fast at running numbers (not trying to be rude). there are all sorts of ways of valuing companies, even in the traditional space of "value investing". http://www.fool.com/investing/beginning/how-to-value-stocks-... gives 5 broad methods to start. if there were a method that involved only objective numerical data, then that valuation could occur continuously throughout the day.
I would say High Frequency Trading is, by definition, not about value, but about price only.
I think the 2 are necessarily related. When Value = Market Price, the issue is fairly/correctly priced. When the two diverge, there is an opportunity. High frequency trading is concerned with finding issues that are underpriced with respect to the "true value". So in that sense, I think High Frequency Trading is certainly about price, as is "long term value investing".
[Collecting rebates and high frequency trading don't so much apply to the claim i'm making here]
In fact, a lot of algorithmic trading is about quickly assessing the value of a company in the context of a larger portfolio. If you accept that the market index can (and should) fluctuate second by second as the world tuns and news gets reported, then you must accept that companies' stocks will be traded alongside it (usually in rough proportion to the amount of liquidity available).
Here's how that can work. If you're comparing two stocks that share fundmental drivers, then you can make "pair trades" when they fall out of correlation. If Pepsi (PEP) does really well one day and CocaCola (KO) does terribly for no apparent reason, then it may be a good trade to buy KO and sell PEP on the supposition that the stocks have moved out of equilibrium.
This is basic arbitrage, and if you extend the practice across all the traded securities you'll find you need some pretty serious computing power. I suspect this accounts for much of the silicon in the basements of banks and hedge funds.
Notice that I'm just talking about the pricing function here. You can price a stock all day long and not have to trade on it.
And I'll agree that there's way too much volume, churn, and speculation in the market. I'm not sure, but I feel like it's becoming more and more a behavioral system. I wish people and institutions would better understand long-term risk and the costs of commissions and slippage when making investments. If "managed" funds became a dirty word, there may be a lot less volatility in the market.