Well, I was being serious. I have wondered that as well....so if you do have any insights, let me know,
Stok, that was the most appropriate smiley I could detect. What I said is a fact - I don't trade retail and have prime brokerage with my own liquidity providers contracted where all data goes into a black box from where I enter and exit trades anonymously which means nobody can see/run/screw my pending orders be it stops or limit entry/exit orders. If you trade size on a regular basis there is no way around this unless as mentioned in my first post you are in a bank or HF.
Well, I may have to contact you in the future. I manage a LP and use IB as my prime. I have spoken to them about their forex operations, and they say orders are sent to the interbank. About 3 years ago, when trading fx with IB, they use to show who my fills where with (Citi, Barclays, etc.), now they don't. I may have to call someone higher up in IB and get this cleared up. Mind you, I am only trading in the 1-2MM size range...I am a small LP, but could easily scale up to 60MM range...and the reason I started this thread to hear from more experience size traders as yourself. Thanks for the info.
You do not understand how IB operates. Simply put, they ship the order off to the market maker offering the best price only when the order is executable. The only exception is when another retail client has placed an opposing order and then they match it within their own system. IB does not operate like a bucket shop. In fact, a fairly high percentage of my limit orders awaiting execution eventually are executed with price improvement.
I always wondered if somehow when you have the prime brokerage agreement with some big bank ,if that can also be conflict of interest in a way bucket shops are in retail forex world. You are ending up trading liquidity of your broker/bank and i can assume if you are profitable they aren't gonna liked it. Would that be a problem ,and is that maybe the reason(just guessing) why you have this "black box" thing which, as you say, enables your anonymity?
dream on but if you are a satisfied customer then stick there. There is no market making broker who does not screw you - some less and some more. Your experience is probably derived from being a 1 to 10 lot trader, go to size and you will wake up fast.
The banks don't really pay attention if you are profitable or not with your trading. Their only interest is that you (yourself or your clients or both) create enough volume with the creditline they are giving you. When trading size I have to use the blackbox system because the blocks of 5M up are usually filled from the same banks and as you say if they know where my orders are they will start to work against me. Regarding IB I did not mean to say that they trade against you like taking the other side of the bet but they can screw with your fills just like Slippage-Master FXCM.
obviously if you are trading size you know a lot more about it than me, I am just a beginner, but it sounds like kind of unsubstantiated paranoia to me. Somebody may be screwing with your fill, just like you screw with others fills, but I don't see how IB has anything to do with it, and just telling me to wait until I start trading size and I will understand is not a very convincing argument.
Of course I hope you're wrong. Every positive thing I've ever said about IB is based on their transparent handling of transactions. They do what you tell them to do very well and very inexpensively (including spreads, slippage, etc.) But if they're taking the other side of any trade at an inferior price, marking up prices, widening spreads, etc., then . . .