Your pint is that the broker himself may be a bigger opponent than the specialist. Please elaborate, and if you mean the same regarding NYSE stocks. Good point. Please be more specific about who these players are who buy the order flow, and how such parties may trade against the customer. Once already the specialist offers such services (i.e. prime brokerage services), you will definitely find institutionals interested in shorting the stock taking advantage of the specialist being in charge of the bid & ask, & that the specialist has personal incentive to get an even better result.
This was Bill Cara's original quote {Would any casino player play 21 (blackjack) if the dealer's knowledge of all the cards on the table was a rule of the house? Would anybody play poker if one of the players knew in advance everybody's cards and how they would play them (and was the banker)?} As far as I know there is no such Casino so this was just a hypothetical to describe the way Brokerage houses use customer information to their advantage. When considering the hypothetical you need to look at the fictional Casino-Algor which employs both a an algorithm based on knowledge of the cards combined with the statistical edge inherent in blackjack and ask whether it will make more money by hitting an 18 hand when it's in a situation where doing such carries no risk (thus an additional edge).
Everyone buys order flow, there is a kick back associated with just about every trade aside from the large institutional stuff and even that has soft money deals worked in.
You might find the best stock in the world, with a great edge, but because you bought too many shares at the exepense of the specialist, the stock will turn against you.
You guys are kidding right?? They are just trying to survive now. But market makers are another story.
Mate you are so off the mark futures dont have MM and with over a 1mill lots traded a day (in the ES mini for example) you dont need liquidity providers. The guy that used to sit next to me would do business for a big hedge fund and could easily do 50k lots a day throwing 2-3k clips at a time as part of some strat the trader was running which appeared from the outside a mean reversion strat though he never told us. Stops get run its a fact of life