Reading Markets on Mind Over Ticks

Payment for Order Flow: How to Read a Rule 606 Report

Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 -0400

When you click buy, your broker decides where the order goes. It can send it to an exchange or to a trading firm, often called a wholesaler, that fills the order itself. Some wholesalers pay the broker for that order. That is payment for order flow, and every broker must report it, venue by venue, in a quarterly Rule 606 report (17 CFR 242.606).

Hypothetical example built on reported April 2026 rates (our math): one 100-share market order in an S&P 500 stock, routed to Citadel Securities. Robinhood reported about 78 cents per 100 shares from Citadel; Fidelity reported about 4 cents.

Trading Sessions Times: Stocks, Futures and FX in ET

Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 -0400

Trading session times differ by market: US stocks trade 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET, but CME’s E-mini S&P 500 runs Sunday 6:00 p.m. to Friday 5:00 p.m. ET with one hour off a day. This week the London Stock Exchange opens at 4:00 a.m. on your New York clock, an hour later than last week, and London changed nothing: the UK set its clocks back on October 25 and the US does not follow until November 1.

Volume vs Liquidity: What Free SEC Data Shows Traders

Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 -0400

SPY traded a median 40.1 million shares a day on exchange over the past year, with 46.9 cancel messages (full or partial) for every trade on its lit book. A small industrial stock trading about 70,000 shares a day saw 13.7. That gap is the volume vs liquidity problem: heavy trading does not guarantee a clean, cheap book.

Volume tells you how much traded. Liquidity is what it cost and how much size the book would take without moving: spread, depth and price impact.