> your trades are getting a different result than if you explicitly paid a brokerage who charges a commission on it.
Yes...the average retail customer submitting a market order will generally get a better fill with PFOF. This is what most people don't usually mention when talking about those terrible high-frequency trading firms.
E.g. if a stock is trading at 10.00x10.10 and I submit a market buy via Robinhood. Citadel or someone else is going to pick that up and sell it to me for, probably, 10.08 or 10.09. Not the 10.10 I would've paid on the open market hitting the offer. It's in fact illegal for me to get a worse (higher) fill than 10.10.
Yes...the average retail customer submitting a market order will generally get a better fill with PFOF. This is what most people don't usually mention when talking about those terrible high-frequency trading firms.
E.g. if a stock is trading at 10.00x10.10 and I submit a market buy via Robinhood. Citadel or someone else is going to pick that up and sell it to me for, probably, 10.08 or 10.09. Not the 10.10 I would've paid on the open market hitting the offer. It's in fact illegal for me to get a worse (higher) fill than 10.10.