If that isn't front running, then what is? And if you wouldn't call that front running, what would you call it? You haven't offered anything to back up any of what you've said.
All I'm saying is that sub-millisecond HFT is only useful to the people doing it and no one else. People defending HFT as being necessary and helpful is ridiculous. Even an exchange where orders go in over the course of a second, are matched up within the exchange, then traded, would not offer latency to a person, but would offer everyone a chance to sync with the exchange cycle and submit their orders with enough time to be matched. If all the exchanges someone was trying to use worked this way it would offer no disadvantage to a human trader, but would make the HFT arbitrage much less lucrative.
Like I said upthread: front-running happens when a broker takes an order for a client and, before submitting it to the market, trades against that order. Front-running is an agency problem.
All I'm saying is that sub-millisecond HFT is only useful to the people doing it and no one else. People defending HFT as being necessary and helpful is ridiculous. Even an exchange where orders go in over the course of a second, are matched up within the exchange, then traded, would not offer latency to a person, but would offer everyone a chance to sync with the exchange cycle and submit their orders with enough time to be matched. If all the exchanges someone was trying to use worked this way it would offer no disadvantage to a human trader, but would make the HFT arbitrage much less lucrative.