Less than two months after its acquisition of FX platform ODL Markets (FXCN acquisition goes ahead), Forex Capital Markets (FXCM) has announced that ODL has adopted its ‘no dealing desk’ (NDD) execution model.
Under NDD there is no dealer intervention: prices are streamed from FXCM’s liquidity providers with a small mark-up and trades are covered back-to-back. Before the acquisition, ODL employed a ‘dealer intervention’ model, whereby client trades can be aggregated by the platform’s dealers and covered according to their own judgement.
Exponents claim NDD is more transparent than other models, but it is difficult to see how there could be much appreciable difference for users between the approaches.
This perception may now have changed following the NFA’s complaint against Gain Capital (National Futures Association serves complaint to Gain Capital), covered late Friday by theweeklyFiX (see also FX comment: Little to Gain, a lot to lose).