You can only sell in a nanosecond because someone else is willing to buy in a nanosecond. And if your goal is to earn money trading in time horizons of minutes or hours or even days, you probably are not equipped to do that as a retail investor.
Why should you have the right to dump VW after the scandal and not someone else? What about an investor that did not read the news until the next day?
> The deal will be incrementally worse as these firms extract value, your price will be the one that all of these firms deemed "meh".
No one owes you arbitrage opportunity. If you think the banana is worth $1, then it is worth $1. Maybe a nanosecond ago you could have bought it at $.999999, but as long as you still think it is worth $1, then what is the problem with paying $1?