Go do some reading. https://www.federalregister.gov/doc...556/disclosure-of-order-execution-information You'll find that they allow themselves LARGE amounts of time for NBBO information to propagate. You'll see lots of mentions of five minutes although they may have dialed it down to a slightly less absurd number in some instances.
Sure it never happens. https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/c...client-orders-after-threatening-sue-zerohedge It's amazing how people in this forum insist that these firms are paying millions of dollars for customer order flow out of the goodness of their hearts, and they just want to give you "better fills".
The purpose of PFOF is to buy the bid and sell the offer. Do that millions of times a day and you make money. You have no industry experience
The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Just where do you work and how is it affected by payment for order flow? Facts are facts. I don't need an industry job to be able to read an article that says "Citadel fined for front running.". Man up and admit it happens. The purpose is to make money. They do this by having MORE information than just the NBBO. They use the order information for their own trades in the same securities of the people for which they are handling orders. It's a ridiculous conflict of interest. It should be criminal. Imagine if you were house shopping with an agent. You're willing to offer $280k on a specific house. The buyer's willing to take $260k. You put in a your offer through your broker and all of a sudden you find out that you broker just bought the property for $260k and is selling to to you for $275k. Yeah she bought and sold the bid and the offer... And ripped you off by frontrunning your offer. Some knuckleheads on this forum will say it's a good thing because it "creates liquidity" by selling the house twice and "closes the gap" between bid and ask prices. It's all BS because the broker never had any actual interest in owning the house and their trade was completely based on being able to manipulate yours to their advantage.
Yet private rooms merely setup a situation where insiders can front run everyone on an institutional scale. Using lack of pricing transparency to screw all the parties involved in the public trading market in wholesale rather than retail manner.