As market volatility persists, brokers have become increasing vigilant monitoring the risk of their clients’ potential (and realised) negative balance exposure following liquidation, but there is another side to liquidation risk that may be even more important for brokers to consider.

June profits and volumes were front-loaded with the bulk of PL in the first 10 days of the month, primarily due to broad-based USD selling. Profitability in that period was focused in EUR and JPY pairs, along with indices and gold. Mid-month activity was relatively flat, but the month finished well primarily because of the continuation of the gold rally. Overall, both profits and volumes recovered well from the lows seen in May.

In a follow-up to my recent post on Aggregation & Spreads: The Race to Zero, I’d like to drill down on the best practices that we use to help brokers distinguish between true retail flow and institutional or proprietary trading flow.

How can they tell which is which, and what can they do to ensure they are receiving the appropriate liquidity for each?

May volumes were very similar to April totals, but still far below the highs reached in February and March. Although volumes were in line with April, profits were far lower. Losses in oil suppressed profitability in the early weeks of May as the majority of retail clients held their long positions into the rally at the start of the month. Movements in indices later in May helped salvage respectable, though below average, overall profits for the month.

Jonathan Brewer, Managing Partner at IS Prime, joins the 'Virtual Vision Finance' liqiudity pannel discussion. 

5 June 2020 – IS Prime has been voted winner of the Best Trade Execution (Prime of Prime) category in the Global Forex Awards 2020.

In the last year we have seen a dramatic fall in interest from our clients and prospects, particularly retail brokers, in “True Prime of Prime” offerings , i.e. where a broker uses a Prime of Prime (PoP) purely as a credit intermediary and has ‘direct’ relationships with Tier1 Liquidity Providers (LPs).

Following IS Prime’s recent announcement about our partnership with Pelican Trading to integrate their social copy-trading technology into our trading platforms, it’s worth exploring some of the potential issues that copy trading can raise for both retail brokers and Liquidity Providers (LPs), and how IS Prime helps address those issues.

Barry Flanigan, head of Electronic Trading Solutions (ETS) at IS Prime, talks to eForex magazine about the pitfalls of purely focusing on spreads.

April saw broker volumes fall off significantly from the near-record numbers recorded in February and March. Profits, though down as well, were respectable as a result primarily of mid-month moves in oil markets that saw prices fall briefly into negative territory. Profits were also buoyed by movements in gold and US indices. Oil prices will likely be in focus again in May as we approach the expiration of this month’s futures contract.