Do High Speed Trading Profits Support Wall Street Banks? What Would Happen If Profits Went Away?

Think of a row boat over the Marianas Trench. It's 36,069 feet deep. Mount Everest would be out of sight with a mile and one half from its summit to water level.Could that be a valid analogy of the height of the stock market and its reasonable value? If you subtract QE 2 that till recently was running at a trillion dollars a year of bond buying and trillion dollar deficits by our irresponsible government. Add that to all the stimulus from central banks like European Union, Japan and China.What is the value of stocks without this alchemy of money-printing support? What could possibly go wrong? Here's a thought. The recent glare of public scrutiny of High Frequency Trading coupled with S.E.C.and Department Of Justice and F.B.I. investigations could determine rather quickly if this type of trading is in fact illegal. Critics claim that high frequency trading is constructively front running legitimate orders from the public.If that HFT trading was stopped immediately what would be the financial ramifications? The question is . How much of the bottom line of Wall Street banks profit is tied to this type of trading? If it were stopped how much of their earnings would go away? Could the banks remain stable and pass stress tests if a portion of earnings were ruled illegal? Some years ago there were only three major exchanges-New York, American, NASDAQ.Now there are 13 public exchanges and 45 "dark pools" and 200 "internalizers". These have become for profit exchanges and off-exchange trading platforms .They sell access for money. That access enables firms like Moragn Stanley and Goldman Sachs and many obscure HFT firms to skim a profit from legitimate order flow.If that all stopped? Could these firms pay their debt? No amount of central bank alchemy could stop another panic about the security of bank stocks. It would be yet another example why Glass steagal should be reinstated and banks should not be on Wall Street