My answer is a bit controversial and requires us to take a step back in the Time Machine.

I think the brokerage is the problem. They all make their money on payment for order flow. And thusly, their analysis platform is the consolation prize. They give you access to the game but you don’t actually have the tools to compete. You think you do, but deep down at any brokerage that is free - you are the product.

BlackIV absolutely shits on the competition. See back in the day, talking early 2000s, analysis and the order technology was separate or more separate. You places your trades at x, and did you analysis at y.

All firms realized the more clients the more payment for order flow, net interest, and additional product offerings they could up sell - so they bought up the competition. Trading commission went to 0 and revenues dried up so they had to maintain the trading product and analysis even though it is a loss leader.

Analysis become commoditized, meaning there is really no difference broker to broker. Sure there are a couple categories like full services and trading but in each category the product offering is the same.

And then enters little itty bitty black iv.

They see this and realize that commission free trading is a paradox because it forces the institution to turn their clients into the product. If the product is free you are the product. So you can either stay somewhat whitehat as a broker and chose to up sell your clients into things that make revenue for the firm like managed products or you can go blackhat and sell your clients interests via payment for order flow.

So BlackIV says “nope, not any more. We’re going to ensure that our clients trades arrive at the exchange on time and unsniffed, but because we have to offer that for free, we have to find a way to give real value to clients in a way that is worth it for them.”

And tada, they rip tools from the deepest darkest back rooms of Wall Street elite and they give them to retail. They don’t exactly tell them how to use them all in the same way because that would be collision, but they see how smart retail traders can be when they can operate in a decentralized manner.

And even without that, each trader can see things that was never available to them. At the low end, a retail traders would have to pay $1700 a month for the data feed that BlackIV provides. And they do it for absolute free with SPY. Everything else is $10 total per month. That’s it.

But the long term play to get enough clients who derive alpha from their data that the revenue is enough to stand up and maintain commission free trading without subsidizing that via payment for order flow and screwing over the very clients that made them.