Robinhood - truly free trades? No worse stock prices?

Discussion in 'Stocks' started by Saltynuts, Mar 30, 2021.

  1. I saw someone the other day post that Robinhood was the only brokerage that they knew of that had truly free trades (stock trades as least). Is that true? No fees or charges at all per trade? And is there evidence that if you use them you might get a worse price than if you had used some other broker? TDAmeritrad, IB, Schwab, etc. etc.

    Thanks!
     
  2. I see tastyworks charges $0 for stock transactions now. Maybe that's been the bar for brokerages for a while.
     
    murray t turtle likes this.
  3. JSOP

    JSOP

    They are free but they are not the only brokerage out there that charges no commission on trades. Tastyworks is another. And even though they don't charge commissions but they do get compensated via Payment for Order Flow (PFOF). With PFOF, it's not that you might get a worse price per se but due to the lack of transparency and the possible conflict of interest that's inherently present, you might not get the best price that you should have.
     
    murray t turtle likes this.
  4. Charles lets you trade free with stocks and pink sheets. Options $.65 per contract, I pay $1 plus with IBKR taking liquidity. Robinhood free option trades and their platform is geared for market orders so fast limits don’t exist. You can’t change orders quickly, very limited platform IMHO. Edit: I have a RH to see what the Mob is chasing.
     
  5. FSU

    FSU

    Robinhood doesn't allow market orders on options.

    Why can’t I place market orders on options? | Robinhood
     
    murray t turtle likes this.
  6. %%
    MOST all of them are '' free'' unquote now.
    BUT RH gets an unusual amount of PFOF.:caution::caution::caution::caution::caution::caution::caution: SEC fees?? Don't know??
    Actually with most any broker you could get price improvement @ certain numbers + with certain trends. I dont care to mention those numbers / but a market order in TQQQ,qld exit on an uptrend most likely would be positive slippage......................................................
    BUT RH does give you another'' free'' single stock, i think? I don't really know.
    Some gun + ammo dealers give free coffee..........................................................
     
  7. 2rosy

    2rosy

    do you have a concrete example?
     
  8. JSOP

    JSOP

    Well this is the problem.
    , I am not able to compare. Right now the order-execution process is a "black box". You don't see the exact counterparty that filled your orders. I don't know when my orders were actually sent to the central exchanges and when they were filled by the MM that paid for my order flow. And without knowing, I can't compare the prices. But I already stated that it's not necessarily that you will get a worse price but it's just that you might not get the best price.