I don't know precisely what the article means. The NYSE Retail Liquidity Program, which still exists, describes two categories of participants: member organizations (MOs) and liquidity providers (LPs). MOs have retail orders, which are defined as originating with an actual person, ie not a computer. LPs provide liquidity to those orders, ie they take the other side of the trade.
I believe Knight would have been interested as an LP. It is not inconceivable that in some circumstances Knight would have been able to submit retail flow as an MO, but 100% of that flow would have been routed to it from brokerages holding actual retail accounts.
Knight was a trading firm, not a hedge fund, and certainly not an institution which held outside money in retail accounts. But consider an entity which does have retail accounts and also has propriety trading for its own account. Suggesting that the former would become inaccessible if the latter lost lots of capital in bad trading is absurd, would mean that retail-customer and proprietary monies were mingled, and would require the violation of untold numbers of regulations. This did not happen with Knight and indeed has never, ever happened.
As an example in the case of Lehman Brothers their bankruptcy didn’t affect retail customers who were protected by the SIPC and whose investment accounts were quickly move to other brokerages.
But it’s not always so sanguine. To find a bankruptcy with commingled prop and customer funds you need only look to MF Global. To find a retail brokerage bankruptcy with commingled funds you can go “Wolf of Wall Street” and look at Stratton Oakmont.
And despite how smooth everything turned out for Lehman there was a period of a day or two for some retail guys where it wasn’t exactly clear where your money was.
I believe Knight would have been interested as an LP. It is not inconceivable that in some circumstances Knight would have been able to submit retail flow as an MO, but 100% of that flow would have been routed to it from brokerages holding actual retail accounts.
Knight was a trading firm, not a hedge fund, and certainly not an institution which held outside money in retail accounts. But consider an entity which does have retail accounts and also has propriety trading for its own account. Suggesting that the former would become inaccessible if the latter lost lots of capital in bad trading is absurd, would mean that retail-customer and proprietary monies were mingled, and would require the violation of untold numbers of regulations. This did not happen with Knight and indeed has never, ever happened.