Schwab has been cutting commissions for years before Robinhood came along, and Interactive Brokers was charging very low commissions too. Robinhood just came along and helped drive the commissions to $0.
All true, but there’s a reason the two biggest players merged today and not years ago.. charging $0 per trade even coming from $1, is a way bigger jump than reducing the price from $7.95 to $1.00... the concept of FREE TRADES disrupted the industry and broke their backs hence pushing them to merge today to focus full time on asset management/advisory etc.
The commission fee business is dead and Robinhood singlehandedly killed it.
If you read the Bloomberg article, you will see that ever before cutting commissions, Schwab's commission income represented only 7% of their total income. For Ameritrade it is much higher.
Yes at Ameritrade it’s 35% but regardless the percentage, that side of the business is dead, and again Robinhood killed it.
Ok I’m done, Robinhood doesn’t pay me!