Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by giorgioz 2225 days ago
how does Alpaca make money?
2 comments

They have a well-hidden FAQ section: https://support.alpaca.markets/hc/en-us/articles/36001104717...

They list several ways in which they "will" make money. My (possibly unkind) reading is that currently they're burning investor money.

Guesing, they are selling order flow. Same like Robin Hood

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/18/a-controversial-part-of-robi...

So Robin Hood is taking from the rich, giving to the poor, and then turning around and selling the poor out?
Selling order flow isn't "selling the poor out". Reg NMS literally requires brokerages to route your orders to where they will get the best execution price. In general you as a retail investor get better execution prices because of how this works (why? because retail investors generally don't have new information that will move the price so they are "safe" trades for liquidity providers).

Now robin hood _did_ get fined for "not perform[ing] systematic best execution reviews of several order types". If that's what you were referring to then fine. But if your complaint is just about selling order flow you should better understand what that means. Maybe start with patio11's How Brokerages Make Money[0].

[0]: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/6/26/how-brokerages-make-mone...

Yeah, I misunderstood what "selling order flow" means; I was under impression this is something closer to front-running. Thanks for the link!