I think people who think brokers have no interests in clients' trades except commissions simply confuse broker firm and the employees' working for the broker firm. I somehow feel easy about the broker firm, but not trust the individual employees who have access to my account. I totally agree if someone has a high profitable system, he should take care of protecting the trading secrets. it is not that hard to reverse engineer a trading system if there are sufficient trading records exist.
Every employee of every US BD has to report their trading activity. I can't believe people really do what your saying. I can tell you, it won't happen at my firm. We don't trade with or against our clients. We don't share their strategy.
besides opening and closing positions in two different broker accounts, you can at the same time intentionally bust one account, for example, if the trade is a loss, close it in the same account; otherwise, close it in another account. as long as once or two in a year, one account is busted, the broker in that account would have no interest in your strategy. on the other hand, this busting strategy plus opening and closing in different account would totally puzzle and scare any one away from piggybacking or reverse engineering your strategy. It is understandable for traders not to trust his brokers. the firm may have no interests in your strategy as long as you do not make tens or hundreds of millions per year. but for a broker that makes less than 100,000 per year, it would be a different story.
My question is why does a trader at the desk of a firm have access to clients' private account info, i.e. trading records, knowledge about their profitability, AND the ability to identify and monitor in real time a specific client's orders as they are placed? Still waiting to hear back from Spike on some of the details.
this is because your broker needs to monitor your trading activity realtime. if you call in for a trade assistance, he can instantly pop up all your trading activity. I know my brokers know what I do in realtime. so spike's concern is reasonable.
So the guy fielding trade assistance questions is sitting at a trading desk trading his own account at the same time? Are these guys otherwise free to go fishing around the entire firm's accounts to see who's making money and who's not, and spend time delving into an individual's trade history without anyone specifically authorizing their access or knowing about it?
the broker guy may not be able to trade his own account when he is working, but it still could be done. for small brokerage house, there are much leeway. for IB, maybe the firm monitors employee online activity, but even that, he can send orders from his iphone. the broker usually has access to all clients account, otherwise, the broker is blocked to serve some clients. since he can have access to client account, he can search the database too especially for small broker house. if you chat with IB, you can know that the person who helps you knows every trade record of your account, even the order not filled. then you get idea...