Lyn,
An honest reply from ICM would clarify this question better than I can, but from the pitch of Tapaas, all trades seem to be treated initially as a warehouse order until the program flags the need to move it off Book A. From a risk management viewpoint, that is the sensible option. Why hand over a trade that a customer is losing money on and give it to others, when it can be kept in-house and capitalised on? The fact that you indicated ECN or Standard on your type of account does not mean that they process your application differently from a "Standard" account. It may be just "bling." And how would you know anyway? The purpose of tapaas is to maximise the warehousing of orders without producing excessive risk exposure to their financial position. Hence the need to monitor on a second-by-second basis the state of all warehoused orders and to identify those trades that are becoming profitable to the trader to the point of being a risk to ICM. In effect, they are using their own matrix to determine "when to hold unhedged and when to hedge" the trades they have taken on.
But in terms of your own trades, being ECN or Standard probably not a large difference in your spread (they talk of EURO 0.1 pip spread on ECN and 1.0 pip on Standard from the Interbank rate, which means 2 pips on the entrance/exit of trade), your swap rates, the commissions charged are different ($3.50 per lot for ECN; none for Standard), the prices you got for the fill, the time it took to open the trade and the time it will take to close the trade, and indeed the price you get for the exit (though there could be some slip here that could be internally manipulated, especially on market orders). The choice to go ECN might be just your permission to let them charge you more commission, and not mean anything else in terms of the warehousing of the trade.
[you would have to do some number crunching as to whether 2 pips extra in the spread versus $7 (both ways) per lot is a better deal.] If you use cTrader you do not have the choice of Standard or ECN; it defaults to ECN only, and you pay the premium on the difference between these two choices for it.
They provide the comparison of the two accounts at: https://www.icmarkets.com/forex-trad...account-types/
This page says that the same spreads are available for all account types (which I assume, means Standard or ECN): https://m.icmarkets.com/en/trading/pricing/spreads Which begs the question, what is the advantage of ECN if your spreads are just as tight on a Standard account? I suppose there might be issues for algo traders, but certainly not for mugs like me.
And this page: https://m.icmarkets.com/en/quickstar...ction/true-ecn says that "IC Markets, a forex ECN broker utilizes the True ECN pricing for all of it's account types, this means that you the forex trader are offered direct access to our interbank prices feeds from over 50 different bank and dark pool liquidity providers. Trading in an True ECN marketplace allows traders to benefit from the best possible prices available from Tier-1 banks and dark pool liquidity providers." This tells me that if "account types" refers to Standard or ECN accounts, the buy and sell prices are exactly the same (with the exception that the Standard adds 1 pip to the spread). So again, there is not much difference here either.
Another angle to consider: Are you provided with any statement summary that indicates ECN details of orders processed? What evidence is there in server logs as to where the order went? To make matters worse, ECN provides anonymity to both ends of the deal, so ICM would not have identities of who took on the other side of the trade. A good scenario for smokescreens to cover the warehousing.
Of course, ICM uses ECN, but it will use it when tapaas says it needs to use it, or because you are such a toxic trader, they can't be bothered handling your orders any more, and they become just an agent and send your order STP (straight-through) and be done with it.
But being treated as one or the other is not a topic that should bother you. The main focus should be the steady improvement of your trading skills and account. None of this stuff is really relevant to that.
FrankieB
An honest reply from ICM would clarify this question better than I can, but from the pitch of Tapaas, all trades seem to be treated initially as a warehouse order until the program flags the need to move it off Book A. From a risk management viewpoint, that is the sensible option. Why hand over a trade that a customer is losing money on and give it to others, when it can be kept in-house and capitalised on? The fact that you indicated ECN or Standard on your type of account does not mean that they process your application differently from a "Standard" account. It may be just "bling." And how would you know anyway? The purpose of tapaas is to maximise the warehousing of orders without producing excessive risk exposure to their financial position. Hence the need to monitor on a second-by-second basis the state of all warehoused orders and to identify those trades that are becoming profitable to the trader to the point of being a risk to ICM. In effect, they are using their own matrix to determine "when to hold unhedged and when to hedge" the trades they have taken on.
But in terms of your own trades, being ECN or Standard probably not a large difference in your spread (they talk of EURO 0.1 pip spread on ECN and 1.0 pip on Standard from the Interbank rate, which means 2 pips on the entrance/exit of trade), your swap rates, the commissions charged are different ($3.50 per lot for ECN; none for Standard), the prices you got for the fill, the time it took to open the trade and the time it will take to close the trade, and indeed the price you get for the exit (though there could be some slip here that could be internally manipulated, especially on market orders). The choice to go ECN might be just your permission to let them charge you more commission, and not mean anything else in terms of the warehousing of the trade.
[you would have to do some number crunching as to whether 2 pips extra in the spread versus $7 (both ways) per lot is a better deal.] If you use cTrader you do not have the choice of Standard or ECN; it defaults to ECN only, and you pay the premium on the difference between these two choices for it.
They provide the comparison of the two accounts at: https://www.icmarkets.com/forex-trad...account-types/
This page says that the same spreads are available for all account types (which I assume, means Standard or ECN): https://m.icmarkets.com/en/trading/pricing/spreads Which begs the question, what is the advantage of ECN if your spreads are just as tight on a Standard account? I suppose there might be issues for algo traders, but certainly not for mugs like me.
And this page: https://m.icmarkets.com/en/quickstar...ction/true-ecn says that "IC Markets, a forex ECN broker utilizes the True ECN pricing for all of it's account types, this means that you the forex trader are offered direct access to our interbank prices feeds from over 50 different bank and dark pool liquidity providers. Trading in an True ECN marketplace allows traders to benefit from the best possible prices available from Tier-1 banks and dark pool liquidity providers." This tells me that if "account types" refers to Standard or ECN accounts, the buy and sell prices are exactly the same (with the exception that the Standard adds 1 pip to the spread). So again, there is not much difference here either.
Another angle to consider: Are you provided with any statement summary that indicates ECN details of orders processed? What evidence is there in server logs as to where the order went? To make matters worse, ECN provides anonymity to both ends of the deal, so ICM would not have identities of who took on the other side of the trade. A good scenario for smokescreens to cover the warehousing.
Of course, ICM uses ECN, but it will use it when tapaas says it needs to use it, or because you are such a toxic trader, they can't be bothered handling your orders any more, and they become just an agent and send your order STP (straight-through) and be done with it.
But being treated as one or the other is not a topic that should bother you. The main focus should be the steady improvement of your trading skills and account. None of this stuff is really relevant to that.
FrankieB
FrankieB
1