6 ms·

Per-user revenue was $109 for 2020. My goodness payment for order flow and cryptocurrency rebates are lucrative.

by CapriciousCptl 5y ago

ok2938 5y ago
Funny that you are being played most, when you think you are in control.
- RobRivera 5y ago
  yea - everytime I try to explain to peers and family what the price of free is, deaf ears.
  - ivalm 5y ago
    It’s better than free, you get a discount relative to NBBO.
    - repsilat 5y ago
      The higher-level argument might be that if PFOF didn't exist, NBBO might be better. If Citadel et al wanted to make markets they'd have to publish their prices. (Of course, that gets rid of the "market segmentation" signals, so it'd probably make life a little better for institutions and make life a little worse for individuals, on net. No doubt smart people could disagree about how much of each effect there would be.)
      - ivalm 5y ago
        > that gets rid of the "market segmentation" signals Exactly, retail investors should basically be happy with PFOF.
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    I understand that Robinhood sells order flow and that you may get a worse fill because of it, but is the average Robinhood user getting 3 cents of slippage on their order of 1 share of Ford worse than a $10 round trip in order fees from a more premium broker on the same trade? I think the order flow model is better for most retail traders. Obviously, if you're buying $20k in stock at a time, paying the fees will be better, but that's not your average Robinhood user.
    - benmanns 5y ago
      Everyone sells order flow. It’s: do you want sale of your order flow to be the only fee you pay or do you want to pay commissions on top of that, too?
      - twobitshifter 5y ago
        That’s not true. Fidelity does not receive pfof.
        benmanns 5y ago
        Their 606 disclosure does have PFOF https://clearingcustody.fidelity.com/app/proxy/content?literatureURL=/9901886.PDF https://clearingcustody.fidelity.com/app/proxy/content?liter...
        twobitshifter 5y ago
        First I’ve heard that. I looked it up and this is for options not equity. https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/trending/IiJL9zOpAk76f_BrDunluA2 https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...
- porb121 5y ago
  You are literally required to get better fill prices than the market with PFOF. You aren't being played any more than if you just send a normal limit order to the market
  - stouset 5y ago
    Why—exactly—do you reason that someone is willing to pay $109 per user per year for their order flow? Put another way, Robinhood’s actual customers are confident that they are able to extract in excess of $109 in value each year they purchase the flow of orders from a given Robinhood user. From where and/or from whom do you suppose this money is being extracted?
    - cturner 5y ago
      There may be opportunity to build a Robin Hood competitor by transparently passing the PFOF fees through to users, rather than pocketing them (as Robin Hood does). Imagine if you paid a monthly $5 subscription to be a member of a broker, and then had unlimited free executions, with the PFOF fees being clearly shown, and credited to your account.
    - asdff 5y ago
      >From where and/or from whom do you suppose this money is being extracted My guess is from other funds that aren't privy to what horse the lemmings are betting on today and riding that wave.
    - porb121 5y ago
      > Why—exactly—do you reason that someone is willing to pay $109 per user per year for their order flow? Adverse selection is scary and knowing your counterparty is worth a lot. This is not as sinister as you're making it out to be.
      - stouset 5y ago
        In other words, Robinhood is bringing fresh chum to the financial sharks of the world. How do we reconcile this with the narrative that they’re the good guys delivering wealth generation through investing to the masses?
- cloudwalking 5y ago
  If UX was the gating factor for buying crypto, and Robinhood let you buy crypto... you had _enough_ control.
vasco 5y ago
Just like "no fee" money exchanges in airports with huge spreads. Same business but internet scale and with the new hype of investing.
- FabHK 5y ago
  Though, to be fair, Robinhood offers reasonably spreads. They must execute client orders at a price as good as or better than the national best bid offer, if I understand correctly (Reg NMS [1]). Now, the firms that buy that order flow offer better (tighter) prices, an improvement over the NBBO, and what Robinhood does is take a cut of that improvement. (Robinhood takes a larger cut than other brokers, fair enough, but those other brokers used to charge an additional flat fee. So, for small orders, you're better off with Robinhood, for large orders you're better off with a different broker. Note that this was the behaviour that triggered regulatory action a while ago, and the situation might look different now, given that other brokers also offer trades without commission. Either way, you should get executed at NBBO or better.) [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulation-nms.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulation-nms.asp
  - pclmulqdq 5y ago
    Robinhood's spreads are much larger than many other brokerages because of the deals they make with order flow buyers. Yes, they are still at or better than NBBO, but many brokerages will give you price improvement on crossing orders down to near the midpoint price (unless you are very good at timing the market and already have a great price from crossing). I did an A/B test of this, and found that RH was actually an outlier in terms of how bad your executions are.
    - FabHK 5y ago
      Matt Levine has some insight on this [1]. And you're right, Robinhood's price improvement was bad compared to standard brokers: > By March 2019, Robinhood had conducted a more extensive internal analysis, which showed that its execution quality and price improvement metrics were substantially worse than other retail broker-dealers in many respects, including the percentage of orders that received price improvement and the amount of price improvement, measured on a per order, per share, and per dollar traded basis. But again, it's a relative issue. For small trades, overall you got a better deal than paying a slightly better price plus a fixed commission. For large trades, nope. So, at Robinhood the rich big traders subsidised the smaller ones. Kind of fitting for the name. > For most orders of more than 100 shares, the analysis concluded that Robinhood customers would be better off trading at another broker-dealer because the additional price improvement that such orders would receive at other broker-dealers would likely exceed the approximately $5 per-order commission costs that those broker-dealers were then charging. All in all, I think their model is defensible, but lying about it isn't. ETA: To be clear, I think their pricing and revenue model is defensible. But: a 10$ fee for a long term trade is also pretty negligible. What Robinhood have democratised is day trading and gambling, and that's not good. [1] scroll down to "Robinhood (1)": https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-07/the-ipo-market-was-too-good https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-07/the-ip...
rattray 5y ago
What was the equivalent per-user revenue for e-trade, schwab, fidelity, etc before Robinhood came to town?
MuffinFlavored 5y ago
$9/user per month?...
Ozzie_osman 5y ago
Out of curiosity what's the fastest way to find that metric in the S1?
- CapriciousCptl 5y ago
  ctrl+f arpu ctrl+f churn ctrl+f key performance etc

Per-user revenue was $109 for 2020. My goodness payment for order flow and cryptocurrency rebates are lucrative.

ok2938 5y ago

Funny that you are being played most, when you think you are in control.

RobRivera 5y ago
yea - everytime I try to explain to peers and family what the price of free is, deaf ears.
- ivalm 5y ago
  It’s better than free, you get a discount relative to NBBO.
  - repsilat 5y ago
    The higher-level argument might be that if PFOF didn't exist, NBBO might be better. If Citadel et al wanted to make markets they'd have to publish their prices. (Of course, that gets rid of the "market segmentation" signals, so it'd probably make life a little better for institutions and make life a little worse for individuals, on net. No doubt smart people could disagree about how much of each effect there would be.)
    - ivalm 5y ago
      > that gets rid of the "market segmentation" signals Exactly, retail investors should basically be happy with PFOF.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  I understand that Robinhood sells order flow and that you may get a worse fill because of it, but is the average Robinhood user getting 3 cents of slippage on their order of 1 share of Ford worse than a $10 round trip in order fees from a more premium broker on the same trade? I think the order flow model is better for most retail traders. Obviously, if you're buying $20k in stock at a time, paying the fees will be better, but that's not your average Robinhood user.
  - benmanns 5y ago
    Everyone sells order flow. It’s: do you want sale of your order flow to be the only fee you pay or do you want to pay commissions on top of that, too?
    - twobitshifter 5y ago
      That’s not true. Fidelity does not receive pfof.
      - benmanns 5y ago
        Their 606 disclosure does have PFOF https://clearingcustody.fidelity.com/app/proxy/content?literatureURL=/9901886.PDF https://clearingcustody.fidelity.com/app/proxy/content?liter...
        twobitshifter 5y ago
        First I’ve heard that. I looked it up and this is for options not equity. https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/trending/IiJL9zOpAk76f_BrDunluA2 https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...
porb121 5y ago
You are literally required to get better fill prices than the market with PFOF. You aren't being played any more than if you just send a normal limit order to the market
- stouset 5y ago
  Why—exactly—do you reason that someone is willing to pay $109 per user per year for their order flow? Put another way, Robinhood’s actual customers are confident that they are able to extract in excess of $109 in value each year they purchase the flow of orders from a given Robinhood user. From where and/or from whom do you suppose this money is being extracted?
  - cturner 5y ago
    There may be opportunity to build a Robin Hood competitor by transparently passing the PFOF fees through to users, rather than pocketing them (as Robin Hood does). Imagine if you paid a monthly $5 subscription to be a member of a broker, and then had unlimited free executions, with the PFOF fees being clearly shown, and credited to your account.
  - asdff 5y ago
    >From where and/or from whom do you suppose this money is being extracted My guess is from other funds that aren't privy to what horse the lemmings are betting on today and riding that wave.
  - porb121 5y ago
    > Why—exactly—do you reason that someone is willing to pay $109 per user per year for their order flow? Adverse selection is scary and knowing your counterparty is worth a lot. This is not as sinister as you're making it out to be.
    - stouset 5y ago
      In other words, Robinhood is bringing fresh chum to the financial sharks of the world. How do we reconcile this with the narrative that they’re the good guys delivering wealth generation through investing to the masses?
cloudwalking 5y ago
If UX was the gating factor for buying crypto, and Robinhood let you buy crypto... you had _enough_ control.

vasco 5y ago

Just like "no fee" money exchanges in airports with huge spreads. Same business but internet scale and with the new hype of investing.

FabHK 5y ago
Though, to be fair, Robinhood offers reasonably spreads. They must execute client orders at a price as good as or better than the national best bid offer, if I understand correctly (Reg NMS [1]). Now, the firms that buy that order flow offer better (tighter) prices, an improvement over the NBBO, and what Robinhood does is take a cut of that improvement. (Robinhood takes a larger cut than other brokers, fair enough, but those other brokers used to charge an additional flat fee. So, for small orders, you're better off with Robinhood, for large orders you're better off with a different broker. Note that this was the behaviour that triggered regulatory action a while ago, and the situation might look different now, given that other brokers also offer trades without commission. Either way, you should get executed at NBBO or better.) [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulation-nms.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulation-nms.asp
- pclmulqdq 5y ago
  Robinhood's spreads are much larger than many other brokerages because of the deals they make with order flow buyers. Yes, they are still at or better than NBBO, but many brokerages will give you price improvement on crossing orders down to near the midpoint price (unless you are very good at timing the market and already have a great price from crossing). I did an A/B test of this, and found that RH was actually an outlier in terms of how bad your executions are.
  - FabHK 5y ago
    Matt Levine has some insight on this [1]. And you're right, Robinhood's price improvement was bad compared to standard brokers: > By March 2019, Robinhood had conducted a more extensive internal analysis, which showed that its execution quality and price improvement metrics were substantially worse than other retail broker-dealers in many respects, including the percentage of orders that received price improvement and the amount of price improvement, measured on a per order, per share, and per dollar traded basis. But again, it's a relative issue. For small trades, overall you got a better deal than paying a slightly better price plus a fixed commission. For large trades, nope. So, at Robinhood the rich big traders subsidised the smaller ones. Kind of fitting for the name. > For most orders of more than 100 shares, the analysis concluded that Robinhood customers would be better off trading at another broker-dealer because the additional price improvement that such orders would receive at other broker-dealers would likely exceed the approximately $5 per-order commission costs that those broker-dealers were then charging. All in all, I think their model is defensible, but lying about it isn't. ETA: To be clear, I think their pricing and revenue model is defensible. But: a 10$ fee for a long term trade is also pretty negligible. What Robinhood have democratised is day trading and gambling, and that's not good. [1] scroll down to "Robinhood (1)": https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-07/the-ipo-market-was-too-good https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-07/the-ip...

rattray 5y ago

What was the equivalent per-user revenue for e-trade, schwab, fidelity, etc before Robinhood came to town?

MuffinFlavored 5y ago

$9/user per month?...

Ozzie_osman 5y ago

Out of curiosity what's the fastest way to find that metric in the S1?

CapriciousCptl 5y ago
ctrl+f arpu ctrl+f churn ctrl+f key performance etc