Smart order routing, direct market access, payment for order flow, internalisation, execution algorithms and transaction cost analysis.
Execution is where strategy meets market structure. Routing choices, access models and venue fees decide whether a good signal becomes a profitable trade or leaks value to faster participants.
This section covers smart order routing logic, DMA and sponsored access, retail order flow economics including PFOF, institutional execution algorithms and how to measure all of it with TCA.
Market makers pay brokers billions a year for retail orders. How PFOF works, what the execution-quality evidence shows, how to read Rule 605/606 data, and why Europe banned it while the US kept it.
Research roadmap
Our editorial plan for this section. Published guides are linked; the rest are in research.
