Recently, everyone has been paying attention to large transfers on the chain and unusual movements in exchange hot and cold wallets, often following "smart money" trades... What I actually care more about is: are you seeing an opportunity with this order, or are you paying someone else's fees?

The sandwich/arbitrage strategy, frankly, often comes down to you placing a market order with too much slippage, and someone else being faster to push the price up, then you buy in, and in the end, you have to thank them for "providing liquidity."
Now I prefer to make fewer moves, place limit orders and wait patiently, minimize slippage as much as possible, and pause if I see the order book suddenly thins out—don't compete with bots in speed.
Whether the chain is stable and whether blocks are congested are the real factors that determine if your order will turn into someone else's lunch money.
Take a look again.