How much are total costs in the US?
If you trade frequently even low costs add up. If its 0.1% and you trade monthly it ends up being 1.2% over the course of an year.
Now it's effectively 0 for most common trades. Here is Schwab for example:
https://www.schwab.com/pricing
If someone is a big options trader they can probably find a better per contract price out there.
Anyone who really cares about spreads will be using limit orders. Otherwise you're talking about pennies on highly liquid shares.
The fact that we're even discussing the possible spread differences between market makers shows just how commoditized retail trading has become.
I suspect they're in the business of collecting the spread on lots of small trades that they can assume are largely random.
But yes, the market maker doesn't run the risk of trading with someone with knowledge and a lot of capital to apply it.
NBBO requires that if there is something better that Robinhood gives it to you.
If you just hold your index fund, you don't pay these recurring spreads.
They also earn some money from 'payment for order flow'.
I bet the uninvested cash product drives some weird incentives - kpis around increasing ratio of sells to buys and increasing pain around removing cash.
...No? Then, uh, a punitive judgment?
>Small fine that amounts to a cost-of-doing-business.
Ah. Hm.