Is that Robin Hood? Can you be specific about the broker? That way there's no confusion in the answer.publicly their entire business model is just making money off of the bid ask spread. however why would they not want to bucket consistent losers?
my theory is that they bucket consistent losers, make money on the bid ask spread between the traders that inconsistently make and lose money, and put the consistently winning traders on the real ecn market. that would be the way for them to maximize profit and there is not much stopping them
As long as they're performing bid / ask arbitrage (and fully disclosing), they're not actually taking up the other side. Just picking it up at market on the exchanges and passing it on to you for a little bit more. They don't have an interest in the outcome here.