Broker order execution quality

[muscleman]

I am doing some research on broker order execution quality and it was interesting that each broker says it is  the best. (Of course, right?)

 

Fidelity: (Click that "price improvement" link)

https://www.fidelity.com/trading/execution-quality/overview

It says per 100 shares, industry average is 0.27 improvement, while Fido has 2.38 improvement.

 

IBKR:

https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=1340

It says per 100 shares, industry average is 0.06 improvement, while IBKR has 0.58 improvement.

 

The interesting thing is that both brokers said they used "IHS Markit", a 3rd party independent consultant, to do this analysis.

 

Fido's stats are based on October 1st 2017 to November 2018 while IBKR's stats are based on 2nd half of 2018, so there might be some difference based on this. But still, the data seems pretty dramatically different.

 

The other one is TD AM:

https://www.tdameritrade.com/tools-and-platforms/order-execution.page

 

It says per 100 shares, it gets 2.4 improvement, though this is done by "S3 Matching Technologies", which is another 3rd party consultant, so results may not be Apple to Apple comparison.

 

My personal experience with TD is that I usually get pretty good improvement on small orders, but rarely got any improvements on larger orders.