The Hall of Mirrors: Enter the Dragon
Think of the 90% algo flow as a hall of mirrors:
Reactive / passive: providing liquidity, recycling quotes, arbitraging spreads.
Mean-reverting: designed to fade edges, capture rebates, lean against imbalance.
Risk-dispersed: thousands of micro-strategies spreading exposure across time, price, and markets.
They don’t author.
They mirror.
They’re like mirrors in a funhouse — lots of activity, but all reflections of each other.
Everything bounces, nothing originates.
Their algos are adaptive parasites: feeding off micro-edges, spreading inventory, recycling risk.
Enter the Dragon: altering the actual lattice of the tape — time + liquidity itself.