Who provides the best execution?

The common view on execution is that ECNs are fast, but market makers/specialists can get improved prices. A recent Celent study evaluated firms on speed of trading, pricve improvement and order fulfillment. It was based on trading data for more than 7,000 trades. In general it seems to confirm the conventional wisdom. Archipelago, for example, was the fastest in filling NYSE orders in the top 250 liquid stocks with an average time of 12.3 seconds. Specialist LaBranche took 26.1 seconds, while Van der Moolen took 21.3 seconds. For the top 15 most liquid NYSE issues, some market-making firms fared extremely well compared to big ECNs, which led some to suggest that ECNs should be filling such orders much faster.

> Here's a MarketWatch article.