I picked up this link from someone on the REIT board. Particularly annoys me since I have a couple of accounts at Schwab.
Here’s a link to a Vanity Fair article by Michael Lewis. He writes about the reaction to Flash Boys one year later. Interesting reading. Still depressing to us small investors. Here’s a snippet:
The UBS dark pool happens to be, famously, a place to which the stock-market orders of lots of small investors get routed. The stock-market orders placed through Charles Schwab, for instance. When I place an order to buy or sell shares through Schwab, that order is sold by Schwab to UBS. Inside the UBS dark pool, my order can be traded against, legally, at the “official” best price in the market. A high-frequency trader with access to the UBS dark pool will know when the official best price differs from the actual market price, as it often does. Put another way: the S.E.C.’s action revealed that the UBS dark pool had gone to unusual lengths to enable high-frequency traders to buy or sell stock from me at something other than the current market price. This clearly does not work to my advantage. Like every other small investor, I would prefer not to be handing some other trader a right to trade against me at a price worse than the current market price. But my misfortune explains why UBS is willing to pay Charles Schwab to allow UBS to trade against my order.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/03/michael-lewis-flash-b…
I plan to lodge my concerns this morning with Schwab. I’m sure to no avail.
D