For those that scale in/out , imagine your trading edge slowly diminishing because your well capitalized broker has been following your trades. We need a privacy law enacted for trades.
The way this game works. After a big winning run there tend to be losing periods. Your account will get noticed during the winning streak. By the time they start copying your trades your account will soon enter the losing streak. And they will lose money. And some point they will throw in the towel. Just before your next run starts and they will miss the winning trades.
Of course it is front running and the broker is shady, agreed. I would stay away from such outlets. Brokers should be in the business of generating commissions not trading pnl.
brokers are totally not interested in what the clients are trading unless the client is a very special client with good track record. do note most clients lose money and definitely brokers wouldn't want to look at their trades. Brokers don't want their minds to be contaminated by looking at those lousy trades.
Brokers and brains? You obviously never worked in the financial industry. Where does the high school dropout go when he cannot find any other job? Property agency or car salesman. Where does the university graduate go when not being able to find any other job? Brokers. Generally speaking of averages. There is the occasional bright star. Obviously brokers have brains just big enough to understand which accounts are profitable and which not. And OP obviously talked about a special case in which a broker had a select few clients. Those clients can be chosen carefully. There is definitely a lot of temptations and opportunities to lead brokers into shady behavior and to poor and sometimes outright illegal decision making.
Where? At free commission brokers? Then they make a boatload from selling order flow and other ancillary fee income.
I wouldn't be surprised if IBKR does this shady practice even if they charge commissions for trades. Almost everything in their backend is automated.
Your tinfoil hat lead you to move from a shady broker with sub 20 accounts to interactive Brokers? You do realize they have entire compliance departments and are audited and have to adhere to strict regulation and guidelines. Each and every account transaction is logged and tracked, even those by employees or in employees PA accounts. Your suggestion is ludicrous.
That is why they had separate MM division in the past, to get around those regulations The MM used to take other side of the Brokerage Division's losing traders but front run the winning traders , not to mention taking the other side of the Auto Liquidator