Last look (foreign exchange)

Last updated

Last look is a trading practice where the liquidity provider (LP) provides a quote rather than a firm price into the trading system or execution venue. Last look venues are often used to conduct trading on foreign exchange markets (FX) for retail foreign exchange trading. [1]

Contents

Procedure

When a request to trade against the quoted price is received, the LP may hold the request for some time, execute the trade (fill) at the price quoted, offer an alternative price (requote) or decline to trade (reject). Firm liquidity venues on the other hand operate an open central limit order book where trades are matched without optionality. Last look's quote-driven behaviour is commonly argued to be necessary to protect the liquidity providers in a fragmented and unregulated market place where there is no central exchange.

Regulation

The last look model has been the subject of several recent investigations and fines for misconduct over abuses of the practice and lack of transparency. [2]

Regulators are showing increased interest in the provision of last look liquidity in the FX market, with the Bank of England conducting a 'Fair and Effective Markets Review' (FEMR) which included recommendations for the FX industry. In response, the FX industry has moved towards adopting a global code of conduct. [3] However surveys indicate that many FX market participants do not believe that the situation has improved in the last two years. [4]

Cost analysis

Both industry comment [5] [6] and the FEMR review final report [7] describe the use of transaction cost analysis (TCA) as a method by which buy side traders can assess quality of execution from all liquidity providers and determine if they are at a disadvantage from last look.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Market maker</span> Stock market trading entity

A market maker or liquidity provider is a company or an individual that quotes both a buy and a sell price in a tradable asset held in inventory, hoping to make a profit on the bid–ask spread, or turn. The benefit to the firm is that it makes money from doing so; the benefit to the market is that this helps limit price variation (volatility) by setting a limited trading price range for the assets being traded.

An electronic communication network (ECN) is a type of computerized forum or network that facilitates the trading of financial products outside traditional stock exchanges. An ECN is generally an electronic system that widely disseminates orders entered by market makers to third parties and permits the orders to be executed against in whole or in part. The primary products that are traded on ECNs are stocks and currencies. ECNs are generally passive computer-driven networks that internally match limit orders and charge a very small per share transaction fee.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Market data</span>

For market data as used in marketing, see marketing information system

Best execution refers to the duty of an investment services firm executing orders on behalf of customers to ensure the best execution possible for their customers' orders. Some of the factors the broker must consider when seeking best execution of their customers' orders include: the opportunity to get a better price than what Is currently quoted, and the likelihood and speed of execution.

Scalping, when used in reference to trading in securities, commodities and foreign exchange, may refer to either

  1. a legitimate method of arbitrage of small price gaps created by the bid–ask spread, or
  2. a fraudulent form of market manipulation.
<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saxo Bank</span>

Saxo Bank is a Danish investment bank specializing in online trading and investment. It was founded as a brokerage firm in 1992, under the name Midas Fondsmæglerselskab, by Lars Seier Christensen, Kim Fournais, and Marc Hauschildt. The name was changed to Saxo when the company obtained a banking license in 2001. Saxo offers trading through its online platforms in Forex, stocks, CFDs, futures, funds, bonds, and futures spreads. The company functions as an online broker with a bank license, without offering traditional banking products. According to Saxo, roughly half of its activities are derived from partnerships with institutional trading partners. More than 100 financial institutions globally service their end clients with Saxo Bank's platforms on a white-label basis

Direct market access (DMA) is a term used in financial markets to describe electronic trading facilities that give investors wishing to trade in financial instruments a way to interact with the order book of an exchange. Normally, trading on the order book is restricted to broker-dealers and market making firms that are members of the exchange. Using DMA, investment companies and other private traders use the information technology infrastructure of sell side firms such as investment banks and the market access that those firms possess, but control the way a trading transaction is managed themselves rather than passing the order over to the broker's own in-house traders for execution. Today, DMA is often combined with algorithmic trading giving access to many different trading strategies. Certain forms of DMA, most notably "sponsored access", have raised substantial regulatory concerns because of the possibility of a malfunction by an investor to cause widespread market disruption.

Treasury management includes management of an enterprise's holdings, with the ultimate goal of managing the firm's liquidity and mitigating its operational-, financial- and reputational risk. Treasury Management includes a firm's collections, disbursements, concentration, investment and funding activities. In larger firms, it may also inhere the financial risk management function.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dark pool</span> Institutional share trading syndicate not accessible to general public

In finance, a dark pool is a private forum for trading securities, derivatives, and other financial instruments. Liquidity on these markets is called dark pool liquidity. The bulk of dark pool trades represent large trades by financial institutions that are offered away from public exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ, so that such trades remain confidential and outside the purview of the general investing public. The fragmentation of electronic trading platforms has allowed dark pools to be created, and they are normally accessed through crossing networks or directly among market participants via private contractual arrangements. Generally, dark pools are not available to the public, but in some cases, they may be accessed indirectly by retail investors and traders via retail brokers.

A multilateral trading facility (MTF) is a European Union regulatory term for a self-regulated financial trading venue. These are alternatives to the traditional stock exchanges where a market is made in securities, typically using electronic systems. The concept was introduced within the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), a European Directive designed to harmonise retail investors protection and allow investment firms to provide services throughout the EU.

High-frequency trading (HFT) is a type of algorithmic financial trading characterized by high speeds, high turnover rates, and high order-to-trade ratios that leverages high-frequency financial data and electronic trading tools. While there is no single definition of HFT, among its key attributes are highly sophisticated algorithms, co-location, and very short-term investment horizons. HFT can be viewed as a primary form of algorithmic trading in finance. Specifically, it is the use of sophisticated technological tools and computer algorithms to rapidly trade securities. HFT uses proprietary trading strategies carried out by computers to move in and out of positions in seconds or fractions of a second.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matchbook FX</span>

Matchbook FX was an internet-based electronic communication network for trading currency online in the Spot-FX or foreign exchange market. It operated between 1999 and 2002.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MetaTrader 4</span> Electronic trading software

MetaTrader 4, also known as MT4, is an electronic trading platform widely used by online retail foreign exchange speculative traders. It was developed by MetaQuotes Software and released in 2005. The software is licensed to foreign exchange brokers who provide the software to their clients. The software consists of both a client and server component. The server component is run by the broker and the client software is provided to the broker's customers, who use it to see live streaming prices and charts, to place orders, and to manage their accounts.

MT4 ECN Bridge is a technology that allows a user to access interbank foreign exchange market through the MetaTrader 4 (MT4) electronic trading platform. MT4 was designed to allow trading between a broker and its clients and so did not provide for passing orders through to wholesale forex market via electronic communication networks (ECNs). In response a number of third-party software companies developed Straight-through processing bridging software to allow the MT4 server to pass orders placed by clients directly to an ECN and feed trade confirmations back automatically.

GFI Group Inc. (GFI) through its subsidiaries provides brokerage services, trade execution, market data, trading platforms and other software products. Clients are institutional customers in markets for a range of fixed income, financial, equity and commodity instruments. GFI is headquartered in New York City and operates from New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and 15 other smaller financial centres such as Dublin, Nyon, Bogota and Tel Aviv.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CitiFX Pro</span>

CitiFX Pro was Citigroup's online foreign exchange market trading platform for retail and small institutional traders including commodity trading advisors, broker-dealers, money managers, and hedge funds. CitiFX Pro discontinued offering services to clients in June 2015 and sold all U.S. accounts to FXCM, and international accounts to Saxo Bank.

Smart order routing (SOR) is an automated process of handling orders, aimed at taking the best available opportunity throughout a range of different trading venues.

A foreign exchange aggregator or FX Aggregator is a class of systems used in Forex trading to aggregate the liquidity from several liquidity providers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LMAX Group</span> Financial technology company

LMAX Group is a global financial technology company which operates multiple institutional execution venues for electronic foreign exchange (FX) and crypto currency trading. The Group's portfolio includes LMAX Exchange, LMAX Global and LMAX Digital.

XTX Markets is an algorithmic trading company. It was founded on 30 January 2015 by Alex Gerko who is currently co-CEO alongside Hans Buehler.

References

  1. Cartea, Álvaro; Jaimungal, Sebastian; Walton, Jamie (1 November 2015). "Foreign Exchange Markets with Last Look". SSRN   2630662.
  2. "Barclays' FX fine: The death knell for last look?". Euromoney. 19 November 2015.
  3. "Foreign Exchange Working Group". www.bis.org. 22 July 2015.
  4. "The LMAX Exchange FX TCA and fair execution white paper". LMAX Exchange Group. Retrieved 2018-12-17.
  5. "A Hard Look at Last Look in Foreign Exchange". 17 February 2016.
  6. "Why Dealer-to-client FX platforms should provide TCA tools for buy-side clients". Finextra Research. 13 July 2015.
  7. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-04-28. Retrieved 2017-08-17.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)