The only way someone front running causes you actual profit margin problems is if your profit margins rely on trading a large volume in a given time period, yes

The only way someone front running causes you actual profit margin problems is if your profit margins rely on trading a large volume in a given time period, yes. This essentially means you're profiting off an understanding of volatility. As Taleb showed, this requires care, since the standard deviation of a security cannot be reliably quantified from historical data, yes. But there are almost always ways to trade large volumes on a prediction of volatility without running into Taleb's steamroller. The easiest first step is to never write a call option on a stock you don't already own (or short sell stocks in any other fashion). Then your losses are bounded since you can't go below zero dollars. Then you've just got to make sure you don't bust when you're left holding the busted security. This can be done with ordinary bankroll management like a poker player might use. But it's also what hedging is for. With hedging, you control the risk distribution of a given trade. All you do is simultaneously make other trades that boom in the case that the first trade busts.