The buy-side has increasingly warmed to the idea of countering the perceived ill effects of high-frequency trading with more advanced trading technology of their own.

We're seeing more services launched with this as the primary marketing pitch. The latest: Weeden & Co, in partnership with trading solutions vendor Pragma, recently announced the release of Ghost, a strategic algorithm built to intelligently work an order using price action as a primary driver for its execution speed. The buy-side typically wants to work an order in ways that does not tip off the high-frequency traders. Ghost remains aware of dark and lit markets and searches for favorable prices and price movements.

The new service is built on its LIFEGUARD technology, which "modulates its trading behavior based on millisecond-level details of activity in the market, including the pattern and price of trades, to help prevent information leakage, gaming, and adverse selection." Other institutional brokerages likewise moved to offer clients more sophisticated tools, notably Getco and Deutsche Bank. Recall also that the Royal Bank of Canada made a big splash earlier this year with its Thor product, which also aimed to empower traditional buy-side player, who wanted to counteract the high-frequency crowd.

For more:
- here's the release
- here's a Financial Times article

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Buy-side aims to embrace and guard against high-frequency trading   
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