On: Robinhood was indeed too good to be true

[MontyCarloHall]

> That Robinhood sold its order flow is unremarkable, but the scale of its activities certainly merits comment. Forbes reports that in the first quarter 2020, 70% of Robinhood’s revenues derived from payments for order flows, as opposed to 17% for E-Trade and just 3% for Schwab. Yes, Robinhood has observed standard practice–but with distinctly above-average enthusiasm.

Those other brokerages charge trading fees (these days, just for options trading), so of course their proportion of revenue from order flow will be lower.

[dehrmann → MontyCarloHall]

On the revenue share breakdown, this is a guess, but I suspect Robinhood users trade more and have lower account balances than Schwab customers.

[lucisferre → MontyCarloHall]

They do address that concern in the article.