It\u2019s not exactly news that there are no free lunches, as economists put it. All the platforms we use daily for free, like Facebook, Google, Whatsapp, use data collected from us to make money. Despite the occasional outrage about their practices, a fine imposed by governments here and there, they continue business as usual.That Google\u2019s incognito mode is not incognito is just the latest appaling revelation. I\u2019d recommend anyone to switch their default search engine to duckduckgo for more privacy.This all illustrates that indeed if the service is free, you are the product \u2014 or your data. Robinhood is no different. As a broker targeting retail investors, they offer commission-free trading on a wide variety of assets. With many of us stuck at home and lucky ones piling up savings, a lot of money has flown into the stock markets. Robinhood recently reached new fame levels thanks to the rise of Gamestop caused by a Reddit community who chose the broker as their go-to platform.I must admit that I\u2019m not an active Robinhood trader. All my investments in traditional assets are going through wealthsimple, where I have an ISA or are invested on FlatEx, a German broker. While at wealthsimple money under $1000 is managed for free, I pay commission on each trade above that threshold. The same applies to FlatEx. I\u2019ve never used a platform where I could trade commission-free.It makes you wonder how Robinhood could make their trading free. What surfaced during the SEC hearings is one concept called \u201cPayment for Orderflow\u201d, which played a huge role in how Robinhood was funnelling orders. I\u2019ve also found out that this practice is forbidden here in the UK. Clearly, there must be a good reason for it.So what is Payment for Orderflow, and why is it controversial?Payment for OrderflowNaive as\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s not exactly news that there are no free lunches, as economists put it. All the platforms we use daily for free, like Facebook, Google, Whatsapp, [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4066"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/zh\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}