Yesterday I was in Brisbane presenting to a group of fx trader from around Australia, several of whom used to be my former students a number of years ago and are now trading to make money in a full time capacity. One of the core topics that I covered in my class was interbank liquidity and price creation, not surprisingly a number of the experienced forex traders in the audience knew what I was talking about but it was astonishing to see that allot of traders still don’t understand exactly how currencies are priced. In order to fill in the gaps I’ve published this short guide.
As many people which have traded forex already know, forex is not traded on an exchange but rather it is traded on an over-the-counter (OTC) basis. Trading over-the-counter is a new concept if you have traded shares in the past as no two brokers will be exactly alike, this is very different to share {brokers} who will always show you the same {prices}. One of the other key differences is that because there is no central exchange when trading forex over-the-counter there isn’t a physical exchange of any foreign currency but instead you’re trading directly with the forex provider, which means when you open a position with your broker you can only close it with that company unlike trading stocks where you are able to sell your shares through any stockbroker.
Now that you comprehend the idea that forex trading is performed on an over-the-counter basis I will start by explaining the basics of price formation. As a result of the OTC nature of foreign exchange the majority of transactions arise between investment banks and brokers as such they aren’t reported on a central exchange, it’s because of this that price formation in the world of forex is more difficult, however like shares and all markets there are some main players in the forex trading world that make liquidity, they are the investment banks. Investment banks generate prices through their dealings with one another and in many cases they will quote prices through a system called EBS which allows one bank to see the prices quoted by another bank. EBS however is not employed by all investment banks, what this means is that there are more investment banks dealing on prices quoted outside of EBS, essentially their own market.
So what will this all mean to you? Well this means allot if you are trading with a market maker or STP provider who will basically provide you with a price that they get from one investment bank or otherwise a price that they derive themselves that is solely based on the price they obtain from the bank they deal with this means you might not always be receiving a fair price. The good news is that there is now an alternative, there are some providers that will show you an aggregated price feed from a variety of banks and also allow you to take part in the price formation, this means that it is possible to place your own bids and offers amongst those offered by several of the world’s leading investment banks. Fx brokers that offer this kind of facility are known as ECN fx brokers.
ECN fx brokers are hard to come by and function in an extremely dissimilar way to traditional forex brokers. Apart from the improved pricing offered by ECN fx brokers they’ll always charge commission, for most traders this is unheard of however to the intelligent trader this is usually a better way to trade. One of many main advantages to paying a commission over a spread is the fact that you actually know just how much you’re paying your forex broker, their fee isn’t concealed within the spread. Paying a commission also means greater opportunity, because you are paying the natural market price you are able to get choice as well as inverted spreads something you’ll never observe with a conventional broker.
Before you all send me a million emails asking which forex provider I deal with I might as well save room in my gmail account and let you know right now. Before I let the cat out of the bag I do intend to make it very obvious that if you look hard enough it is also possible to uncover a number of ECN brokers, just ensure you do your research before you opening a real trading account as you will find many brokers in existence that claim to be ECN forex brokers but are in reality market markers. I have trialled nearly all the ECN brokers and so-called ECN brokers and found that there’s only one true ECN forex provider and this is also the forex broker that I personally trade with, it’s Australian based provider IC Markets. IC Markets have the best execution by a long shot and their pricing is one of the most accurate that I have ever witnessed. As nearly all of you already know I don’t promote any particular broker, I just trade using the forex broker that I feel has the best product and most transparent pricing and that broker is IC Markets.
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Posted under Currency Trading
This post was written by admin on February 2, 2012
