I spent the better part of a year working with one of these firms as an advisor. Just so you know. They do exactly what the article says they do. They don't take risk. They take pennies and they take pennies over and over and over. I sat next to one guy who traded nothing but Apple stock. He actually wasn't a guru on Apple as a business. He just traded that one stock..over and over...sometimes 200-300 trades in an hour. He had to pay the clearing house a price per trade but it was infinitely small and it was per trade, not per share traded.
We had the S&P live high speed commentary fed into the trading floor. When you watch CNBC or CNN for "breaking news and live stuff" you are the 5-7 second delay LATE. These guys are in and out or just sitting there waiting for you to get in and then they cream you. It is the vast majority of the daily trading. It is in the 1/10th of a second at worst and you can't even think to blink let alone decide.
You haven't got a prayer of beating them. Not a prayer.