No, they are a liquidity provider. Liquidity providers only make money when there are imbalances in the market. Notionally because markets tend to drive fast towards efficiency, you can't realistically make money just being a market maker.
So then, you have to offer additional services. HRT has the SDP that they provide, and of course charge fees for. But then the question is why would anyone do this, versus just going through any other financial institution.
The answer is basically all up on their website
"As a liquidity provider, HRT develops automated trading algorithms designed to provide the best prices to our clients".
The question that should be asked is as a user, why would I want to sign up with HRT or any similar financial company? The answer for HRT is because you want to have access to more complicated financial derivatives - you don't need to sign up and pay fees to buy basic stock.
So they promise that their algorithms give the user the best price, which is a legal way of saying that you will pay less for a certain asset and make money on it, and you can't say that because you can't guarantee this.
And its well known that nobody ever gets rich of an algorithm in finance unless you are well established large firm intricately tied with the government that can move so much money as to influence trading.
Being a market maker vs "We have a fancy trading algorithm that statistically is never going to outperform just buying VOO and holding it, but the thing is if you get lucky, it could" are two very different things lol
Moreover, I would be very surprised if the majority of their $8 billion annual profit came from client market making.
Right, exactly what I said. They don't make money by market making. They make money by charging transaction fees, and on an access basis to their "algorithms" which are designed against analyzing the complex futures that they are the market maker for.
The incentive for users to sign up with them is to get access to "better" pricing for whatever commodity they pair the buy/sell orders for - but remember these are futures so its all betting, and so the algorithms don't really mean anything.
They don’t charge fees, because they’re not a brokerage or exchange.
They pay fees to exchanges.
As a market maker, some rebates are given back conditional on their activity.
They have no users.
You’re just constantly obliviously asserting falsehoods that betray an almost comical lack of understanding of the reality of these businesses.
My understanding of these firms is limited too, but I’ve never heard of market makers charging transaction fees.
Isn’t it actually the opposite? they pay for order flow instead? They should be making money from bid-ask spread, not fees.
> Right, exactly what I said. They don't make money by market making
“client market making”. That’s very different from “market making”, you two are not in agreement at all here