So this isn't about moving the market itself with the orders. There are numerous exchanges on which shares are bought and sold. They aren't just traded on the NYSE and NASDAQ. In fact most large investor institutions have their own Dark Pool exchanges.

What Robin Hood does is sell the orders to high frequency traders, which then front run these orders and can great a small incremental disparity per trade. It's not even .01 per trade.

However, the benefit is that every trade is done at a profit to the high frequency trader, because they are simply fulfilling an order, and not holding the stock.

And to the regular small investor, the price movement is inperceptible.

The actual work of high frequency traders was discovered by large institutions because their order volumes were much higher and because they were much more price sensitive, and they saw a much larger swing in their price from which they were closing transactions.

This was all detailed in Michael Lewis' book "Flash Boys". So if you liked "The Big Short", this one is a must read as well. So in this case they are giving from the poor to the rich, but it's really a small imperceptible amount and because of the vagueness of what's happening most retail investors are completely unaware nor that much interested in what's happening here.

You are getting a zero commission trade, which may cost you $7 somewhere else, do you really care if someone tacks on a $0.50 cent charge? You are still up $6.50.