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)...

We examine the information content of retail order flow relative to dark institutional and lit markets. We use multiple sources of retail order identification and account for the fact that market opacity affects order routing choices of both institutions and the brokers who sell retail orders....