A broker should be rewarded/paid for providing a service to a client, the act of trading in a financial market involves a certain cost and also bears some amount of risk for all parties involved (liquidity providers, takers and everyone in between). I have no problem with brokers being paid to provide the service, and accept their element of said risk (SNB events for example etc etc).
However
'Some'? brokers in the past - in fact since trading was even an activity humans engaged in - have been known to participate in all manner of neferious activities to increase the profits of the business, which would objectively be deemed unfair and potentially illegal as per the regulations. Because it's a business after all, not a charity and the realities of human nature are at play here also.
I don't have any personal evidence of any wrong doing by a broker, I've seen terrible fills and weird anomalies, read many stories... its a really grey area because for the brokers clients, it's probably impossible to really know for sure if that fair and orderly market is truly being maintained in all circumstances and at all times. We can only view the raw price feed and maybe some market depth as provided by the broker or data provider, watch our orders being processed and executions occur
But we can't ever truly know the business logic of the actual order flow 'behind the scenes', what actually occurred to match buy and sell side by the broker "middle man".
I can understand anyone who has traded for any reasonable period of time would exercise their due diligence, be aware of the games and transgressions into the unfair and illiegal - brokers have and continue to engage in... and generally view the entire brokerage industry with a certain amount of suspicion and distrust. You can talk about smart routing and NDD's all you like however conflicts of interest do abound.
I don't believe anything which is said in this thread will really change anyone's opinions on the above. But it's probably appropriate too that Jason would like to represent the service his brokerage provides in the best possible light, within this murky grey.
IMO.
However
'Some'? brokers in the past - in fact since trading was even an activity humans engaged in - have been known to participate in all manner of neferious activities to increase the profits of the business, which would objectively be deemed unfair and potentially illegal as per the regulations. Because it's a business after all, not a charity and the realities of human nature are at play here also.
I don't have any personal evidence of any wrong doing by a broker, I've seen terrible fills and weird anomalies, read many stories... its a really grey area because for the brokers clients, it's probably impossible to really know for sure if that fair and orderly market is truly being maintained in all circumstances and at all times. We can only view the raw price feed and maybe some market depth as provided by the broker or data provider, watch our orders being processed and executions occur
But we can't ever truly know the business logic of the actual order flow 'behind the scenes', what actually occurred to match buy and sell side by the broker "middle man".
I can understand anyone who has traded for any reasonable period of time would exercise their due diligence, be aware of the games and transgressions into the unfair and illiegal - brokers have and continue to engage in... and generally view the entire brokerage industry with a certain amount of suspicion and distrust. You can talk about smart routing and NDD's all you like however conflicts of interest do abound.
I don't believe anything which is said in this thread will really change anyone's opinions on the above. But it's probably appropriate too that Jason would like to represent the service his brokerage provides in the best possible light, within this murky grey.
IMO.