Yea, well kinda. Atleast from what I understand from the research I've done and how it works is like this. I could be totally off base but I've been told that this is exactly the reason why you don't Wana use brokerages such as webull and rh

So what happens in actual real life is that these brokages own a pool of shares of some of the biggest/largest/popular/in demand stocks. So for example let's just use apple. So a brokerage like webull "owns", just for sake of ease and understanding, 500, 000 shares of apple. So then you, as a retail investor using that brokerage wants to buy 500 shares of apple. On the other end of that, another one of their customers wants to sell 500 shares of apple (or several others using the brokerage), or they themselves can sell it to you from their pool, so instead of pulling the shares from an exchange, they pull it from themselves, and thus can set it up so the buying/selling of those shares doesn't cause a jump in the price of shares, because those shares are being done intentally, rather than externally. When you buy these shares from these brokerages you don't actually "own" the shares, you just have the right to buy and sell them (if that makes sense). This is the theory behind why people who were holding gme were direct registration their shares, as when they do that, they by regulation do own the shares (and thus these brokerages can not loan those shares out or manuplate the data)

As I understand it, brokerages where you pay a fee (like fidelity or tdameratrade) doesnt work like this, and when you purchase shares on those brokerages you do own the shares, and this is why you pay a fee (or atleast again, thats what ive been told) and they do get them directly from the exchanges (thus effecting the price of the stock). It's a bit more complex than that, I think the data of the sell still gets recorded in the level 2+ data and if the demand surpasses their supply they que up the order to add to their exsisting pool of shares, and I think that depending on the ticker that the order does get routed to an exchange. It's all very complex, and I don't know if I fully understand how it works. Maybe someone else can chime in and give more details or tell me where I'm wrong.