[benreesman]

PFOF isn't (typically) illegal, a better word might be "controversial". There's nothing free in this life: the zero commission brokers are making it up somehow.

While the studies on how PFOF effects execution quality are varied, this summary [1] from Wharton seems fairly balanced. It's not as simple as citing NBBO and moving on.

Personally I'm suspicious of the practice mostly because of the pretty clear conflicts of interest that it creates. Again, this is controversial, but the people arguing it's ok are for the most part making money from it.

[1] https://wifpr.wharton.upenn.edu/uncategorized/research-spotl...

[loeg]

The zero commission brokers typically make most of their revenue on net interest margin. PFOF is a smaller portion.

[Scoundreller]

securities lending doesn’t hurt if your clientele likes heavy short-interest-worthy meme stocks

[loeg]

Yeah I'm mostly talking about traditional discount brokerages (Fidelity, Schwab), not Robinhood.

[xadhominemx]

Robinhood makes the majority of their revenue on options and crypto. Vanilla equities is becoming less important.