Retail 'investors' shouldn't have any issue with BATS if anything BATS provides liquidity, however retail 'traders' stand no chance because the computer is far better at technical analysis and pattern matching than the average trader. Retail traders never really stood a chance against institutions because retail trades the market rather than creating it like institutions do.
eg. A retailer can't execute a short squeeze but an institution can.
BATS is an exchange like NASDAQ. They're facilitating and executing trades for their clients. NASDAQ handled 70k per second in 2008, and could handle almost 4 times that load(http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0112/056.html).
eg. A retailer can't execute a short squeeze but an institution can.