How do brokerage firms make money?
"Regarding ""Interest on idle cash"",  brokerage firms must maintain a segregated account on the brokerage firm's books to make sure that the client's money and the firm's money is not intermingled, and clients funds are not used for operational purposes. Source.   Thus, brokerage firms do not earn interest on cash that is held unused in client accounts. Regarding ""Exchanges pay firm for liquidity"", I am not aware of any circumstances under which an exchange will pay a brokerage any such fee.  In fact, the opposite is the case.  Exchanges charge participants to transact business. See : How the NYSE makes money Similarly, market makers do not pay a broker to transact business on their behalf.  They charge the broker a commission just like the broker charges their client a commission.  Of course, a large broker may also be acting as market maker or deal directly with the exchange, in which case no such commission will be incurred by the broker.  In any case, the broker will pay a commission to the clearing house."
Yes the company can still pay dividends even if they aren't making a profit. 1) If the firm has been around, it might have made profits in the past years, which it might be still carrying (check for retained earnings in the financial statements). 2) Some firms in the past have had taken up debt to return the money to shareholders as dividends. 3) It might sell a part of it's assets and return the gain as dividends. 4) They might be bought by some other firm, which returns cash to shareholders to keep them happy. It pays to keep an eye on the financial statements of the company to check how much liquid money they might be carrying around to pay shareholders as dividends. They can stop paying dividends whenever they want. Apple didn't pay a dividend while Steve Jobs was around, even though they were making billions in profits. Many companies don't pay dividends because they find it more beneficial to continue investing in their business rather than returning money to shareholders. Wall Street salaries are rather exorbitant but its influence is far from insignificant.  Do you know where pensions come from? The money that veterans and retirees rely on to survive. Hedge funds.  How do the firms and companies that employ all those workers listed in greater numbers? Institutional money management AKA hedge funds as a small subset.   A company in distress and is in threat of laying off thousands of employees. What can help it? A private equity firm that will actively work to save and restore the company, for it's own profit, but the employees will still have jobs.   NO large company with tens of thousands of employees can exist right now without the capital raising and transaction advisory services of an investment bank. Stock trading as a means to grow personal wealth would not exist.   While true these institutions make a disproportionate amount money, you must consider why. Nearly all front office jobs on Wall Street have 6am-8pm hours. Investment banking analysts have up to 100 hours a week, that's sweatshop salary per hour. Hedge fund managers wake up at night sweating to check Asia markets to see if they'll still have a job. These are not the suburban 9-5 jobs where you can actually have weekends. The high salary comes from an extremely rare skillset that's taught only from experience not in schools, high stress and commitment, and the highest quality of labor (mostly ivy leaguers on Wall Street, they've worked their asses off for these jobs).   Salary has to do with supply and demand. I have the upmost respect for janitorial workers because they do what we don't want to do, but their pay isn't great because anyone can be a janitor. If most people in the country could build a portfolio with a sharpe ratio higher than 2 that billions of pension dollars would rely on, then we won't have such high hedge fund salaries, for example "I recommend a Roth IRA. At your age you could turn 25K into a million and never pay taxes on these earnings. Of course there are yearly limits (5.5k) on the amount your can contribute to a Roth IRA account. If you haven't filed your taxes this year yet ... you can contribute 5.5K for last year and 5.5K for this year.  Open two accounts at a discount brokerage firm. Trades should be about $10 or less per. Account one ... Roth IRA. Account two a brokerage account  for the excess funds that can't be placed in the Roth IRA. Each year it will be easy transfer money into the Roth from this account. Be aware that you can't transfer stocks from brokerage acct to Roth IRA ... only cash. You can sell some stocks in brokerage and turn that into cash to transfer. This means settling up with the IRS on any gains/losses on that sale. Given your situation you'd likely have new cash to bring to table for the Roth IRA anyway. Invest in stocks and hold them for the long term. Do a google search for ""motley fool stock advisor"" and join. This is a premium service that picks two stocks to invest in each month. Invest small amounts (say $750) in each stock that they say you should buy. They will also tell you when to sell. They also give insights into why they selected the stock and why they are selling (aka learning experience).  They pick quality companies. So if the economy is down you will still own a quality company that will make it through the storm. Avoid the temptation to load up on one stock. Follow the small amount rule mentioned above per stock. Good luck, and get in the market." I wouldn't choose any of the above. Buying stocks and staying long in my case is the cheapest way to go (retail brokerage commissions have just been getting cheaper and cheaper. )   The added costs of trading options make it even dicier for me, a retail investor, to take risks. To understand how to make money with options, I'd have to be much more sophisticated investor. "Oftentimes, the lender (the owner of the security) is not explicitly involved in the lending transaction. Let's say the broker is holding a long-term position of 1MM shares from Client A. It is common for Client A's agreement with Broker A to include a clause that allows the broker to lend out the 1MM shares for its own profit (""rehypothecation""). Client A may be compensated for this in some form (e.g. baked into their financing rates), but they do not receive any compensation that is directly tied to lending activities. You also have securities lending agents that lend securities for an explicit fee. For example, the borrower's broker may not have sufficient inventory, in which case they would need to find a third-party lending agent. This happens both on-demand as well as for a fixed-terms (typically a large basket of securities). SLB (securities lending and borrowing) is a business in its own right.  I'm not sure I follow your follow-up question but oftentimes there is no restriction that prevents the broker from lending out shares ""for a very short time"". Unless there is a transaction-based fee though, the number of times you lend shares does not affect ""pocketing the interest"" since interest accrues as a function of time." Yes, but it's *other institutional speculators* they are exploiting, as I made clear in my message. i.e. they prey on the people who prey on the small investors. The man on the street being upset about it is just completely stupid. It does not affect them one iota.  Also, it's worth pointing out that the amount of revenue generated by HFT is absolutely miniscule compared to all other forms of speculation. The return is somewhere around $1 for every $100,000 traded. So, even when a majority of trades in a market are HFT, a very small proportion of the profits are. "It may be margin loans or credit lines given to brokerages. I have no idea what a loan book is though so don't I don't really know. Also no one ""plays"" in equity markets with borrowed money unless they know for sure what they are doing or they have collateral as in the case of margin." "http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/goldman0424.pdf ""At the heart of Goldman Sachs‘ sales and trading business is our role as a ―market maker.‖  As a  market maker, the firm stands ready, willing and able to buy and sell financial instruments at the  initiation of our clients.  Goldman Sachs‘ clients expect the firm to do so, regardless of whether  the other side of a transaction has been identified or is readily available. """