Quote from Toonces: TradeStation, Nasdaq, 'intelligent', postmarket maybe 5PM. I called their trade desk, and they confirmed exactly what happened, saying that thier 'intelligent' orders go to brut first, trying to match orders within brut, even if the order would cross the market. The 'intelligent' order then looks at the other ecns. Unless BRUT can take the better offers proactively, and they know that BRUT's connection to those other venues is actually working at the time, that's just plain dumb of them. The whole point of a broker implementing a smart-routing algorithm is to find the best prices themselves, not lay it off on a possibly dysfunctional third party. BRUT, in particular, is the worst place to send such orders, given their bugs and screwed up rules.
Equity order routing, by way of manual decisions, will be slower and costlier than a well-designed and well-used auto-router.