I'd be very surprised if Schwab started selling order flow. One reason why the old guys prefer Schwab/TD to robinhood (and paid the commission) was because of more consistent fills because Schwab wasn't selling order flow

> I'd be very surprised if Schwab started selling order flow

All the discount brokers sell order flow. When I was an options trader over a decade ago, we bought Schwab flow.

Professional trading platforms like IB tend to be more execution oriented.

Schwab and TD Ameritrade already sell their order flow, which shouldn’t be surprising in the least if you pay attention to stock and option trading.

Also, having your order sold to Citadel doesn’t mean you’ll get a worse fill.. Citadel still has to respect NBBO prices for fills

> having your order sold to Citadel doesn’t mean you’ll get a worse fill.. Citadel still has to respect NBBO prices for fills

Lots of orders fill better than NBBO in dark pools. That’s how Citadel et al make money. That said, the slippage doesn’t really matter for small cheque sizes—it’s too small to matter.

Even with Schwab, I get tons of fills less than NBBO. Maybe not as much or as good as IB, but you're still getting price improvements a lot of the time.

They have to report the exact fraction of orders they sell, to whom, and for how much, so no need to speculate: https://content.schwab.com/drupal_dependencies/psr/606/2020-...

TL;DR: they primarily sell to Citadel and Virtu.

and in other times, you can make money off of the float. Especially if you’re geared towards individuals making lots of short-term trades.