The algo is only one part of a real trading organization. Granted it's the one that gets all of the credit, and is perceived as the sexy side but operations and reporting is easily as important. If you had the best algo, but you kept making mistakes or mis-reporting because your platform was crap, you'd be out of business as fast as if your algo didn't make money. I'm talking here of hedge funds where assets under management are all import and generally external. It might be a different story in a market maker or prop shop where getting research into production fast is all important.

Thanks Dan, the analogy is a stretch maybe, but most algorithms fail due to being narrow models of reality, and criticised by too few eyes. If I discover something, it's extremely unlikely that others will believe it anyway (unless I prove it by becoming filthy rich as a result in which case I'm just fine).

You're pretty right about good trading algorithms but that doesn't necessarily apply to good traders or good trading systems. A good system - hft or otherwise - needs to be flexible and evolve to stay in touch with an evolving ecology. And to do this, it needs to keep track of many different trading ideas and algorithms, each of which may have its day in the sun.