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by evanpw 4115 days ago
I think you're confusing two different issues. If a retail customer's order is actually sent to an internalizing firm, then trading ahead of it would be _actual_ front-running, is already illegal [1], and is taken very seriously by the regulators.

What Lewis _calls_ front-running in his book is something completely different, and involves reacting quickly to public information rather than misappropriating private information.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manning_rule