Robinhood, Schwab and other entities that normal people have their stock portfolio (euphemism) with get billions of dollars annually from market makers like Citadel or Virtu for bringing them our business.
They pay for our trades. And we don’t pay Schwab & Co. How make those market makers make money then?
Specially if you consider that it would be illegal if they would not give our trades the best price.
How does it even work?
It probably does not. We probably get skimmed when we trade. In the maelstrom of high speed trading this might be rather tedious to fully investigate. It is fractions of % anyway. Somehow I personally feel that the SEC is not actually eager to rock the boat that much these days.
If you are not paying you are the product.