We show that retail traders in 2019-2020 incur transaction costs an order of magnitude smaller than those during the Barber and Odean (2000) sample and spreads 35% to 60% smaller than comparable institutional spreads. Moreover, retail effective spreads changed only trivially relative to...

We directly compare retail investor execution costs with exchange execution costs. We find off-exchange retail trades execute at lower effective spreads than comparable exchange trades, primarily due to the uninformed nature of retail trades. These results hold when payment for order flow (PFOF)...

Using rule 605 reports from major market makers that receive retail order flow, we examine the impact of zero-commission trades on order execution quality. We find that the effective spread for marketable orders between 100 and 499 shares marginally decreased following the zero-commission cut....