Rule 606 Routing Disclosure Explorer

Net payment for order flow per 100 shares is the broker's net financial compensation for routing an order category to a particular venue, normalized per 100 shares of order volume. "Net" means gross PFOF received minus any access fees or exchange charges the broker paid to that venue. A figure of $0.18 means the broker received, on net, 18 cents for every 100 shares routed to that venue in that order category during the quarter. The 2019 amendments to Rule 606 required net rather than gross disclosure to make the true economics more transparent. If the figure is negative (rare). The broker paid more in access fees than it received in routing compensation.

No, not as a mechanical relationship, and not directly from Rule 606 data alone. A higher PFOF figure documents that the broker received more compensation for routing those orders, which creates a documented financial incentive to continue routing to that venue. Whether that incentive translated into worse fills for customers is an empirical question answered by Rule 605 execution-quality data, not by the routing report. Academic research and SEC economic analyses have found mixed results: some wholesalers that pay higher PFOF also provide price improvement above the NBBO midpoint; others have not. The correct analytical sequence is to read 606 for the routing and payment structure, then read 605 for effective spread, price improvement rate, and fill speed before drawing conclusions.

Routing concentration, the percentage of a specific order category sent to a single venue, tells you how dependent the broker's routing is on one counterparty. When a single venue receives 80-90% or more of a broker's market orders, it means: (a) the broker has a concentrated financial relationship with that venue, (b) your order flow is very likely going to that venue, and (c) any execution-quality issues at that venue affect nearly all of your orders in that category. High concentration is not inherently bad, a venue providing exceptional price improvement might reasonably attract a high share, but it does mean the execution outcome for customers in that category is highly correlated with how well that single venue performs. Low concentration, with flow split across multiple venues including regulated exchanges, generally indicates the broker uses more competitive routing logic.

Rule 606(b)(3) requires broker-dealers that handle more than 100,000 non-directed orders per month in NMS stocks to provide a customer-specific report on request. This report shows where your account's orders were routed in the prior six months, along with the net payment attributable to your specific orders, not just the broker-wide aggregate. It is more informative than the public aggregate report because it reflects your actual order mix. To request it, contact your broker's compliance department or customer service and ask specifically for a Rule 606(b)(3) customer report. Not all broker-dealers are subject to this requirement, smaller firms handling fewer orders are exempt. Verify your broker's coverage status on their regulatory disclosures page.

Because the two rules measure different things. Rule 606 measures where orders went and what the broker was paid for routing them. Rule 605 measures how well those orders were executed, specifically, the effective spread (actual execution cost to the customer), the price improvement rate (how often the fill beat the NBBO quote), fill rates, and execution speed. Without 605 data, you know the routing economics but not the customer outcome. A broker earning low PFOF and routing primarily to exchanges may still deliver worse effective spreads than a wholesaler-heavy broker if the exchange routing model produces more rejects or partial fills. The 605/606 comparison is the minimum analysis required to draw meaningful conclusions about broker execution quality.

No. This tool is an educational scenario explorer, it helps you understand how PFOF figures translate into cost impact, what routing concentration means, and how to structure a 606/605 analysis. It uses hypothetical or user-entered illustrative values and produces educational output, not regulatory findings or legal assessments. For actual compliance evaluation, broker-dealer auditing, or regulatory comparison, consult the broker's official Rule 606 filings on their website, cross-reference with FINRA BrokerCheck and SEC EDGAR disclosures, and if needed, work with a qualified financial or legal professional. This tool does not accept real account numbers, proprietary data, or confidential broker information.

The monthly PFOF estimate is: (monthly shares ÷ 100) × net PFOF per 100 shares. This gives you the total compensation the broker received from routing your approximate share volume during a month. It is not a direct cost charged to you, PFOF is paid by the venue to the broker, not deducted from your account. The relevant question is whether that compensation arrangement caused the venue to execute your orders at prices slightly less favorable than what a venue with no payment relationship might have provided. That difference, if it exists, would appear in Rule 605 effective spread data, not in Rule 606 figures. The basis-point calculation divides the PFOF per share by the stock price and multiplies by 10,000, giving you a way to contextualize the payment against the price of the asset being traded.

Three changes matter most. First, the 2019 amendments required net payment disclosure rather than gross, brokers must now report PFOF received minus venue access fees paid, making the true economics visible rather than just the headline payment. Second, the amendments created the 606(b)(3) customer-specific report requirement for larger broker-dealers, giving retail investors the right to see where their own orders went (not just the broker-wide aggregate). Third, the amendments expanded the data fields required in the public aggregate report, making cross-broker comparison more standardized. Before the 2019 amendments took effect (phased in from mid-2019), the public reports contained less granular payment data and did not include a per-100-shares normalized figure, making cross-broker comparison significantly harder. Any analysis relying on pre-2019 reports should note the regulatory period explicitly when comparing with modern data.

It works from the aggregate figures a broker publishes, which cover all customer orders of a given type rather than any individual trading pattern. An account whose orders are consistently larger, smaller, more marketable or concentrated in different securities than the broker's average will experience something different from what the aggregate implies. The output describes the disclosed population, and applying it to one account carries that assumption.