You can count on Vanguard Brokerage to strive to get you the best price for the trades you place.
Where do orders go?
Trade execution refers to how brokerage orders are routed and completed in the market, and execution quality can affect how a trade is processed.
Trade execution is the process of completing a buy or sell order after it is submitted through a brokerage account.
Trade execution practices consider factors such as price, speed, and market conditions when routing and executing trades.
Price improvement and execution quality metrics provide information about how a trade was executed compared with available market prices at the time of the transaction.
What is "best execution?"
When you place a brokerage order with us, your order makes a round trip—from you to the market and back to you.
We route your order to one of our market centers, and we strive to get you the "best execution" price in a timely fashion by following these practices:
Market center reviews
We rigorously review market centers for their system availability, service quality, and financial and regulatory standing.
Execution quality
We evaluate the quality of how the market centers execute in one or more market segments. We consider various factors such as:
- Execution speed.
- Overall effective price compared with the national best bid and offer (NBBO).
- Price improvement.
- Liquidity enhancement.
We route our orders to the market centers that consistently execute at a price better than the NBBO to help ensure you receive the best possible experience.
Reports available
Monthly and Quarterly reports that disclose where we route orders and the nature of our routing relationships, are publicly available.
View the quarterly reports for Vanguard Brokerage Services® 1
GOOD TO KNOW!
"The markets" are always in the news—going up or going down—with potential impacts to your portfolio. It helps to gain an understanding of what "the markets" are.
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