Boston prime hidden spread feature???

Hi,

Watch this screen shot from a presentation over Boston Prime (http://www.bostonprime.co.uk./), this is a Boston Technologies company.

Watch how the markup they can apply. I love the "non visible for end user" reminds me of one old trick in MT4 ;-).

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Visible would be commissions charged outside the spread. Non-visible would be a spread that's marked up and quoted to the client.

(Edit: to be clear, when I say visible is charged outside the spread, I mean the spread being marked up, not the one quoted to the client... I'm trying to answer this as if you were a broker reflecting on what options you have. Non-visible is just quoted out directly..)

This screen shot is from their 'group management' page. Basically you're setting quote and server configurations for a specified group of clients already in your client base. This is why there's a "No" option, since you probably already have a default markup or commission factored in...

A good example of where you'd use this "group management" feature would be when signing up clients who want to observe Islamic finance. You'll see an option at the top to turn off rollovers, and instead of being charged interest you can set an additional fee/commission/markup on the trade.



fx13, dude, you witch hunt too much... It's good to be skeptical, but at the same time you can't just jump to negative conclusions if you don't understand what you're dealing with.

Hi,

I see in the next line comission & that's what applies to ECN like commission fees. I might be an expert in brokers back office & too much skeptical but watch the line below.

Any way thanks for your feedback.
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Yes, if you want to charge a commission as reported by MT4 on a per lot or per $ value bases there's a spot for that too below.

It's all in how the accounting works.. and what information you want to disclose to the clients. Most (if not all) brokers aren't transparent and hide their underlying market to their users.. this isn't a bad thing since brokers generally won't want to be away from the rest of the market in case their clients use them arbitrage.. but it can be bad if the brokers do it on purpose.

Put another way, if your clients know your markup (in some STP models brokers will tell the client they are being quoted interbank rates but they are charged a small markup for the deal) and the market quotes before said markup (visible markup) then they'd have a little more ammo to pressure you to lower them.. It would be like knowing the profit margin of a used car before buying it from a dealer.

Sorry my previous post was written in hast, but this should clarify.

I should mention... there are bad brokers out there. I'm not defending brokers in general.

Boston Tech only provides the tools to run a brokerage... there are other options too, like taking the bridge in house (FXCM for example recently switched from a BT hosted MT4 to their own implementation) and in the end if you're going to be a service provider for other brokerages, you gotta provide them with all the tools and options they'd ever think of needing.. if they use them for good/evil or not.

In the end, what matters is your broker's business practices, not their tools.

IT's like the MT4 virtual dealer pluggin. You can use it or disable it. Metaquotes built it to fit brokers needs agree. But knowing too that Boston Prime have these features in it's back office is important for more transparency.

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