Just to clarify, while the displayed size at the inside is usually between 3m-6m, you'll find that if you take out the offer it is usually instantly refreshed. As far how wide it goes, I've never seen it widen significantly, but admittedly I haven't seen it during figures. However, bear in mind that the markets you are seeing are from global investment banks as well as other IB traders, thus for quotes to widen it would require multiple independent parties to all widen their quotes. These banks are also major players in the institutional interbank market. As opposed to the traditional FX house where you trade against the firms quotes, and the firm in turn hedges their position out if they need to. Yet, that FX house doesn't play any role in the interbank market.
I like IB for futures/stocks, but for forex i cant use them, spreads dont start to stay tight until around 7.30am LONDON TIME, yesterday around 6am LON TIME on the GBPUSD the spread was consistently between 7 - 12 pips wide; i cant trade of that; futures currencies are the way to go imo.
We did have an issue earlier today, that quotes were not showing from one of our market-makers - even though you could have still executed a trade against them - but that was later in the day. You should never see cable as wide as 7 pips on IDEAL-Pro (maybe IDEAL). You should call us if you observe that.
It will NEVER happen.....There business model does not follow this...They seem to NEVER change or adapt....I think they are expecting for eveyone to see things THEIR way... Michael B.
Is anyone trading fx options on the interbank or futures side? What is the best broker to do so on the interbank side? So far Saxo appears to be one of the few offering vanilla.
CME GLOBEX: Options on EuroFX and Yen futures. You can trade them thru IB or other brokers. www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=47251
I'm thoroughly confused on how to compute the margin for IB Forex. Can someone please show an example of how to calculate the margin for $100K EUR/US? Thanks.
You can simply line up the order and right click on choose "check margin" in the drop down menu. Depending on the other currency balances and positions the amount will vary but should roughly be 50:1