&gt; People seem to defend HFT for some reason (the front running kind, not the necessary arbitrage kind)<p>I&#x27;m not defending the front running kind.  The argument is that the front running kind (which is in no way actual front running and is instead latency arbitrage) is the same as, and fundamentally a requirement of the arbitrage kind.<p>Further, most peoples model of what latency arbitrage actually is, is so flawed as to create strong biases when they shouldn&#x27;t exist.