I read several of your articles to decide whether your Substack presents new facts or analysis. It does not. Your writing triggers many of the heuristics I use to filter "industry flack" from genuine dissent.
Tax policy isn't something I know a lot about, so I'll discuss your article "Breaking Down the New Yorker's Slanted Robinhood Story".
> "Brokers by definition are middlemen who have customers on both sides. And if we have to pick the side that matters more to Robinhood, it’s obviously retail customers. To suggest otherwise is either disingenuous or negligently ignorant."
Channeling my inner Antonin Scalia here. The Cambridge English dictionary defines a customer as "a person who buys goods or a service." There is a perfectly reasonable argument that Robinhood users are not customers at all, let alone Robinhood's primary customers. It's not a good look to dismiss the plausible as "disingenuous or negligently ignorant". That's a symptom of ideological conflict, which is dull and tiresome.
> "Payment for order flow is something that it seems only one financial journalist understands well enough to explain"
I see a trend here. People who disagree with you are ignorant or lying. It's not difficult to understand that PFOF entails selling user orders to brokers under common control with enormous asset managers that hoard advertising data and make market-moving trades. Questioning the intelligence of those who disagree is another symptom of ideological conflict.
> "Did stock markets haemorrhage value in 2007-2008? Famously so. But the causes there were complex. Was excessive Wall Street greed a part of it? Sure! But so were a lot of other elements — including weak consumer financial education."
With all due respect, that sounds like some sleezy shit Anthony Mozilo might say. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but it's hard to see this as anything but pandering to one side of an ideological conflict.
>Channeling my inner Antonin Scalia here. The Cambridge English dictionary defines a customer as "a person who buys goods or a service." There is a perfectly reasonable argument that Robinhood users are not customers at all, let alone Robinhood's primary customers.
I'm not following this. Are robinhood customers not buying stocks from them? Are stocks not "goods or a service"?
>It's not difficult to understand that PFOF entails selling user orders to brokers under common control with enormous asset managers that hoard advertising data and make market-moving trades.
You seem to be beating around the bush here. What nefarious activity are you suggesting they're doing? Front running? Because that's explicitly illegal.
>I see a trend here. People who disagree with you are ignorant or lying.
>[...] but it's hard to see this as anything but pandering to one side of an ideological conflict.
> Are robinhood customers not buying stocks from them? Are stocks not "goods or a service"?
When PFOF is involved, Robinhood users do not buy stocks from Robinhood. They buy them from the Robinhood customer who buys order flow.
> What nefarious activity are you suggesting they're doing?
I pointed out a troubling conflict of interest and a potential ability to act on that conflict in a legally ambiguous manner. For what it's worth, one of Robinhood's customers was recently sanctioned for old-timey tradeahead front running.
> I hope you see the irony here.
I don't see the irony. Can you explain it to me? I was trying to be opinionated, but intellectually honest. Did I fail?
Just to start with one thing here, you're arguing that Robinhood's retail customers are not in fact actual customers despite the fact they very obviously meet the definition you use? lol ok
Tax policy isn't something I know a lot about, so I'll discuss your article "Breaking Down the New Yorker's Slanted Robinhood Story".
> "Brokers by definition are middlemen who have customers on both sides. And if we have to pick the side that matters more to Robinhood, it’s obviously retail customers. To suggest otherwise is either disingenuous or negligently ignorant."
Channeling my inner Antonin Scalia here. The Cambridge English dictionary defines a customer as "a person who buys goods or a service." There is a perfectly reasonable argument that Robinhood users are not customers at all, let alone Robinhood's primary customers. It's not a good look to dismiss the plausible as "disingenuous or negligently ignorant". That's a symptom of ideological conflict, which is dull and tiresome.
> "Payment for order flow is something that it seems only one financial journalist understands well enough to explain"
I see a trend here. People who disagree with you are ignorant or lying. It's not difficult to understand that PFOF entails selling user orders to brokers under common control with enormous asset managers that hoard advertising data and make market-moving trades. Questioning the intelligence of those who disagree is another symptom of ideological conflict.
> "Did stock markets haemorrhage value in 2007-2008? Famously so. But the causes there were complex. Was excessive Wall Street greed a part of it? Sure! But so were a lot of other elements — including weak consumer financial education."
With all due respect, that sounds like some sleezy shit Anthony Mozilo might say. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but it's hard to see this as anything but pandering to one side of an ideological conflict.