Oh yeah. The stock broker can charge you $25 per withdrawal to your bank account for example ($50 if you leave overseas), and other "goodies" like that. In reality, it costs them a few pennies to wire money to your bank, if at all.
I guess the argument is. Even if you are paying $9.99 at Ameritrade, they are still making you pay in other ways. They just screw you an extra 10 bucks. There's no reason you can't get a lower rate than $9.99 TD. Commissions/fees are always negotiable especially if you do a decent amount of trades and or have been a client for a while. Give your rep a call and ask them for a reduction. You can trade for less at other brokerage firms so you can ask TD to give you something that is a bit more in line with the other firms. Worked for me.
The retail discount brokers are making money "through the back door" by selling your order flow to wholesalers such as Knight and Citadel. Retail order flow, considered "uninformed", is aggressively sought by the payment-for-order-flow firms, a handful of which dominate the field. The retail client pays for it through higher spreads, as these types of deals (as well as internalization) increases adverse selection for those placing resting orders in the lit markets.
EARLY EXIT:I guess the "so what" is that it hasn't been done before in equities (as far as I know). Financial cafe. Made a lot of trades with them. Averaged 120 trades per day.
I don't trade retail. Except for my retirement account. They can have the order flow on my 10 trades a year. BTW, Robinhood openly admits they will sell order flow. Part of the reason they think they can survive with $0 comms.
Robinhood is legit. I use them to actively trade equities. I have a nontrivial amount of capital on their platform. Very easy to use. It's more for swing and position trading than daytrading. I can't imagine daytrading through their mobile app. Though to be honest, I have daytrade a few times on their app. I use limit orders almost exclusively. Can't trust their market orders. They probably saved me decent amount in commissions already. My only 3 criticisms are : 1) No margin account (yet!). Supposedly, margin will become available later this year. Let's see. 2) Can't short. That sucks 3) T+3 settlement. Sucks. I sell and I want to use my capital right away. But no, I have to wait 3 freakin' biz days to use my capital. I'm sure they are earning interest on that. Other than that, it works fine. But DEFINITELY not for daytrading! LOL