Thanks Robert. Does Level 3 MD provide the order information in real time or is it a summary at the end of the day?
Real time. That way you can see that at each price, how many orders are at that price and how big each order is. Very few platforms offer L3 right now. In fact I think only TT and Rithmic do right now. CQG has it in their production que. Not sure about CTS T4. For me, it has no value. For others, knowing that there are a number of players vs one at any one price, has value.
Even with CME's Market By Order (MBO aka level 3) book data, you still don't see the entity associated with an order. A single entity may even have multiple orders at a given price point. Because of the ambiguity here, sure you'd know if there was some large order that it was a single entity, but an entity wishing to execute a large trade may break it up to in to multiple, smaller orders, to hide that. As such, it may not be as helpful as you'd first expect, except to know where your own order sits in the queue. Some reading you may (or may not) be interested in: Executions: https://www.cmegroup.com/confluence/display/EPICSANDBOX/MDP+3.0+-+Trade+Summary MBO: https://www.cmegroup.com/confluence/display/EPICSANDBOX/MDP+3.0+-+Market+by+Order+-+Book+Management
Don't let anybody fool you. We've all seen your orders - they are tagged with "USDJPY". We trade against them everyday and we're shooting for your stops!
In forex most probably nobody cares. Equities and options unless you direct send the order to the Exchange probably only your broker -or execution firm- knows about your order(wich in behalf of you will send or match it).