[Dopameaner]

How much does banning payment for order flow really effect the brokerages? For the sake of argument, The market-makers (like Citadel) no longer are allowed to pay brokers for their order flow.

This would force wholesalers (aka, Market-makers) to compete, and brokers to evaluate them. Currently brokers have an obligation to give best execution to their customers, which they generally fulfill by routing orders to wholesalers and carefully monitoring how much price improvement those wholesalers provide.

This ban would allow the brokerages to just route to the best Market maker, as there is no longer an incentive(or "bribe") by the Market makers.

How much of an impact does it really have for Zero-commission brokerages with the ban? Currrently, Robin hood two incentives are 1) Making money from per-trade commission from market-makers. 2) Incentivize (or gamify) users to make alot of trades.

If we remove 1) through the above ban, then will we still have zero commission brokerages? IMO, The above ban will help the retail traders, and the zero-comission brokerages would still be in existance (e.g, Charles Schuwab net interest margin)