you are confused bc you don't understand the market making model, it's fine, i get it, you don't have a top down understanding of market structure
Yes I do but anyway you choose not to see that. That's fine.
when i mean broker, i mean they are not acting in Agency capacity.
if they are are trading against you, they are taking the other side of your trade, they are not brokering they are market making
That's exactly what I mean as well. They are NOT acting in Agency model where they are passing your orders to 3rd-party or a central exchanges. Instead they internalize the order which is market making. At least you understand what is market making. And I am telling you IG, CMC and all of the spread betting firms, as long as there is no central exchanges for spread betting, they are ALL market-making, which is trading against you, taking the other side of the trade directly. So if you are trading directly against your broker, 1 on 1, now imagine what happens when you win? What is happening to the broker's position, which is the opposite of yours? If you do this exercise, you will see this conflict of interest which is to the detriment of the trader.
There are exchange traded futures on ice and cme and other exchanges, banks have aribtrage positions in the cash market against the futures markets. again this is the 3rd misfact that you've stated. https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/fx/
Yes that CME is a central exchange market but it's for currency FUTURES not SPOT currency which is what spread betting and CFD "retail forex market" is all about. Totally different market, totally different financial products and is not an efficient hedge with very horrible liquidity.
1.) first you said IB doesn't route orders, this was wrong
I was not aware that IB do payment for order flow for zero-commission trades. Ok fine but what does that have anything to do with spread betting firms trading against their clients and profiting at their expense? Even if IB does payment for order flows, IB is still routing orders to 3rd parties and not internalizing them?
2.) then you said that there isn't an exchange for FX, that is wrong
That is NOT wrong. There is NO exchanges for FX, which everybody understands as SPOT FX. Let's not play word games here.
3.) in the OTC market, there is no exchange, it goes on a platform like EBS but banks need to have bilateral agreements with each other to trade on EBS or they go direct via bloomberg and reuters --> again the 3rd wrong thing you have said today
I never said anything about the routing of interbank FX transactions. You are the one who have been talking about this, something that is completely irrelevant to OP's question or the topic of discussion here.
i already said that IG are quoting you and hegding in the interbank market and that the bid/ask spread is slightly wider than interbank, so yes it's a proxy, i already said that/ what is your point? why are you taking what i said and acting like i didn't say it? That's the essence of being a market maker, your quote to the client is not the actual market but a proxy. That's the essence of having an OTC market. The OTC market structure is:
1st level Bank to Bank (interbank)
2nd level Bank to Client
3rd level Dark Pools, multi-lateral trading facilities
This is how the goldman and morgan stanleys of the worlds rake in millions, are they running scams? NO, they have OTC trading desks direct with clients in fx, stocks and bonds...It's the same with IG
I just explained to you 10 x how it works. Their price is wider than the real market.
If you are a profitable trader, they hedge your trades and lock in a few points and are flat.
If you are not profitable, then they don't do anything and benefit from liqudity, client pool crossing the bid/ask. So they don't care if you win or lose. A market makers wants as a many clients to trade as possible. That's why market makers pay RObinhood for order flow, you clearly don't get it. The clients find benefit in the OTC model, so they continue to use it. You keep ignoring the fact that spreadbetting is tax free or when robinhood commission are tax free
The guy said he wanted to trade indices, bc he got rejected by AMP, he can start off small at IG.
IB is 2 tics wide in indices, if he can't make money in that, then he won't make money trading with a 1 tick/bid ask. I mentioned indices bc there are micro contracts on indices, that's what he is asking for
Great you regurgitated again how interbank foreign exchange works but it still does not negate the fact that spread betting firms engage in unscrupulous practices of trading against clients and profiting at their expense without proper disclosure and everybody is better off staying away from them and trade financial products that are traded on central exchanges.
And btw, the guy wants to trade e-micros, just small-size contracts because he has small-size account, NOT indicies, e-micros have contracts for gold too. You just assumed that he wants to trade indicies. But no matter how small the account size, he shouldn't fall victim to market-making where he will never be able to profit. That's my point. The fact that spread-betting is tax-free is a moot point. If the guy's not going to make any profit, he's not going to have any taxes to pay anyway, what's the need for it be tax-free? 76% of the people lose money with spread-betting firms which is about the same % of people who trade with casino market-making retail forex brokers. I guess 76% of the clients who sign up with those spread-betting firms don't need it to be tax-free.

Last edited: