[ajbonkoski]

This is so broken. The author describes front-running and then goes on to conflate that with arbitrage. Those aren't the same thing! The only thing the author gets right is that neither are a consequence of HFT, they can happen at any trading-speed granularity. Further, there is absolutely nothing unfair about arbitrage. Every-time you go to a store and think "I saw this cheaper at a different store, I should buy it there instead", you're also doing a form arbitrage. Arbitrage synchronizes prices. The arbiter earns the price spread as a reward for moving the prices into alignment.