Don’t just pull RH’s, pull all brokers’. Paying a commission doesn’t protect you from anyone maximizing profits.
All the discount brokers sell order flow.
> Schwab earned 1.4% of revenue from payment for order flow, TD Ameritrade about 8.4%, and ETRADE about 6.1%.
They all make half or a lot less of their revenue from commissions.
> The contribution to revenue across the discount brokerages is minimal: 6.8% at Schwab, 28% at TD Ameritrade, and 17% at ETRADE.
> Interactive Brokers is the one standout, largely because it caters to high-volume professional and semi-professional traders; it makes 49% of revenues on commissions.
All RH did was run a tight ship on costs and cut commissions to zero. In theory, commissions could go less than zero.
If by "they" you mean WSB - for now, they just nuked RH's app in Play Store, but they're already calling for a class action lawsuit.