I recently discussed why “
“free trades" have certainly reduced the transaction costs, the selling of data to the highest bidder has likely cost investors more than they saved.
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To wit:
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As is clear from the billions paid for order flow and the billions made from executing those orders, there is no such thing as ‘free trading.’ Thus, the claim of ‘commission free trading’ is often no more than a rhetorical ruse to attract new investors and distract from the billions of dollars in PFOF and other hidden costs that ultimately come out of retail investors’ pockets. It’s pretty clear that these intermediaries are often merely transferring the investors’ visible upfront commissions into invisible after-the-fact de facto commissions."