> retail investors get mostly better prices from market makers When broker-dealers (BD) say this, check their foot notes. The precise statement is something l

> retail investors get mostly better prices from market makers When broker-dealers (BD) say this, check their foot notes. The precise statement is something like "80% of market orders are filled with a price improvement relative the the NBBO at the time of execution." That is a super narrow definition of "better". It says nothing about limit order fill rates, improvement rates, or improvement magnitudes. More importantly, it says nothing about the path of the NBBO midpoint. "Better" needs to be measured relative to the counterfactual where orders are not sent to the BD. The BDs that fill Robinhood orders are all associated with large systematic hedge funds. The hedge funds make directional bets and hold positions overnight, activities that move the NBBO midpoint. That is a seriously suspicious conflict of interest. If the BD is benefiting from hedge fund research about short-term price movements (probably legal if disclosed to hedge fund LPs), it will harm Robinhood clients. If the hedge fund is benefiting from BD research about retail flows (probably illegal), it will harm Robinhood clients. The data only has to cross the corporate boundary once to be harmful. The worst thing about this clear conflict is that the BD and hedge fund are the only ones presently capable of measuring that harm. Until the SEC undertakes a systematic analysis, it is inappropriate to call this a "conspiracy theory". The SEC doesn't even have the data it needs to study this question. Weird.