It appears that Schwab has completed its consolidation and integration of TD Ameritrade. Now this giant is going head to head with Robinhood for leadership in retail brokerage - and all while leaving just about all other competitors in the dust...
With a suite of 14 new charts, Alphacution presents an updated review of and key highlights for retail equity option trading - including overall market share, market share by broker, and market share by wholesale market maker - updated through June 2024...
Alphacution falls on its sword to admit errors in attribution of equity index option activity to Robinhood - and offers an explanation for why occasional mistakes like these are a necessary evil of our research process...
By a quirk of accidental data, Alphacution dramatically sharpens its estimate of Robinhood's engagement with index options since May 2021; an update that has implications for our overall estimate of retail engagement in index options...
Alphacution provides additional evidence - via Robinhood - that option order routing revenue, the primary source of PFOF, is being negatively impacted by retail adoption of 0DTE option trading - as well as emerging indications of a resurgence in crypto trading...
Public.com - the emerging retail brokerage platform that actually appears to be trying to "democratize finance" rather than merely pay lip service to the concept - launched option trading functionality in Dec 2023 with a brokerage model that is unique relative to all other retail brokerages. Alphacution provides context and exposes some fascinating details...
With latest data in hand, Alphacution shows that the zero-day option (0DTE) phenomenon has contributed to long-term declines in aggregate payment for order flow (PFOF) levels thereby causing a ripple of subtle and not-so-subtle impacts in the market ecosystem...
Alphacution details anomalous behavior between Robinhood, Morgan Stanley & Co, and other wholesale market makers in recent retail option order flow...
The Wall Street Journal's Gunjan Banerji uses Alphacution's estimates in "Some Amateur Investors Retreat From Markets."
There are two causes of the "giant sucking sound" that you hear - and need to pay attention to for the year ahead. The first is painfully obvious; the second should be (painfully obvious), but likely isn't. Alphacution makes its case...
