I understand they don't, but the execution options could matter. Retail brokerage platforms don't actually send your orders to the exchange: http://www.schwab.c

I understand they don't, but the execution options could matter. Retail brokerage platforms don't actually send your orders to the exchange: http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/legal_compliance/important_notices/order_routing.html http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/legal_compliance/impo.... If your turnover is very low, and your trade size is small, this shouldn't make an impact in liquid products, but only having market and limit orders can be very limiting. Granted, IB is probably the best retail platform, but it's not perfect. Even a smart beta strategy would likely have 4X turnover to an index. I do hope they succeed, and perhaps they begin offering a more open, premium offering to compete with Capital IQ, etc. I just have a hard time seeing how operating as a fund-of-funds essentially is a good business model considering the CAPEX they have to build the software. I could see it as a way to build, test, and then offer a premium back-testing platform or portfolio analysis/attribution tool once they've ironed out the bugs. There's a lot more money in that business than in fund-of-funds.