Where do orders go?
You can count on Vanguard Brokerage to strive to get you the best price for trades you place with us.
POINTS TO KNOW
- Vanguard Brokerage works with several trading partners to execute orders placed with us.
- We follow "best execution" practices so that you can get the best price for your order to buy or sell.
- Quarterly reports are publicly available with details on the relationships with our trading partners.
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
Quarterly reports that disclose where we route orders and the nature of our routing relationships, including any payments for order-flow arrangements, are publicly available.
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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REFERENCE CONTENT
Market center
A point where an order to buy or sell a security is filled, such as a stock exchange or an electronic system.
National best bid and offer (NBBO)
A Securities and Exchange Commission requirement that brokers execute clients' trades at the best available ask price when buying securities and the best available bid price when selling securities.
Price improvement
The opportunity for an order to be executed at a better price than the prevailing national best bid and offer—better than the best bid for sell orders and better than the best offer for buy orders.
Liquidity
A measure of how quickly and easily an investment can be sold at a fair price and converted to cash.
Portfolio
The sum total of your investments managed toward a specific goal.