South Bay Systems: https://lu.ma/southbaysystems

SF Systems: https://www.sfsystems.xyz/

> The market maker will eventually need to trade out of that position

This is why Citadel has $60+ billion dollars of "securities sold not yet purchased" on their financial statements.

They have sold $60+ BILLION of shares to investors and not yet bought the underlying securities.

So when exactly will that $60 billion of buy pressure hit the market?

The "farce" is that when a market maker like Citadel purchase your order flow, the orders are typically not routed to the lit market (e.g. NYSE, IEX, etc) but instead routed to "alternative trading systems" (ATS) e.g. "dark pools" where your purchase has no effect on the price of the security.

This breaks the whole idea of a "market" where every buy puts upward pressure on a price and sales put downward pressure. Thus, a "farce".

That's not even getting started on the "farce" that is an ETF and how they are balanced/re-balanced.

Gotta love brokers that don't have your best interest in mind. Who needs best execution? /s

We use fractional shares. But otherwise you are correct, our minimums are set to allow you to buy at least $5 of each member of the US 500.

We do not charge trade commissions. There are some SEC fees charged for trading across most major brokerages. The national best bid offer (NBBO) means you will get executed at the current best price for a given security across all exchanges.

For 1 — dude, please back off the “[the rules] are a farce”.

Citadel and friends pay to trade with you because they think you’re dumb and they can make money off you. They’re giving you or your broker a better deal because they think they’re smarter than you. That’s all it is. They’d rather trade with you than with the median person on the market. Because they think you’re dumb.

You’re welcome to be insulted by that. It’s an insulting thing. But it’s not some grand conspiracy.

1) are you going to sell your trade flow to Citadel / market makers like Robinhood and your competitors do? That's the dirty secret way of making money that you seem to have completely excluded. The reality is that adds up to substantial "invisible" fees that the investor has no transparency over because you sell your trade flows to them and they make a higher than normal spread. And the whole "doesn't matter if we sell your trade flows, the rules require you to get best execution" is a farce and everyone in the industry knows this - otherwise there is no reason why Citadel or Virtu would bid billions of dollars to just buy the trade flow.

2) Are you going to rebate your borrow fees back to investors? This is the other dirty secret way of making money. Many people don't realize that you can earn lending fees by lending your shares out for people looking to short stocks, and those add up to substantial amounts over time for a scaled asset manager. Do you keep this instead of rebating it fully back to your customers?

3) If the answer is no, you don't sell trade flows and yes, you will rebate your borrow fees, can you make a lifetime commitment that you won't go back on your word? Many people who start in this industry say they won't sell trade flows and then after they reach scale they change the footnotes and agreements and starting selling trade flows.

I had a hard time with closures when doing async programming. Is that something one should avoid?