Where are big banks buying or selling?

How to tell at what price are big banks buying or selling currencies? I believe that this information is available in Bloomberg and Reuters terminals. But what is it called and how can I (MT4 user) figure the levels out?

Thank you

You need bank indicator

I think the term is the same as in the equities: level 2 quotes. What is the bank indicator?

Sorry but you lol escapes me...either you don't know, you don't know it exists or you are just plain stupid. Either way, why make an effort to reply to my thread in the first place if you have absolutely nothing valuable to contribute?

I think the only way to know where the big players are buying/selling is to have inside information or to do volume analysis to see where the big orders are being filled.
If that information was publicly available trading would way be too easy.

check out timingcharts.com ..

Banks players invest on important support resitance with fundamentals , they buy sell both side .. hedge type .. highly qualified economist trade with proper money management as they will be happy if they can make 20% Annul ... they are not interested short term , trade with bank levels and get bankrupt lol ... you need good capital

Look at this screenshot: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=254789

The level 2 quotes for forex are definitely available, I just don't know where....

some thing like this?

;P

Well there is one thing that works and I imagine those that trade 4H and Weekly charts use often:

http://www.cot-futures.com/

The instructions how to use it are on site, also if interested pay membership which is very cheap so you have up to date data.

Wow, what an uninformative thread.


Those terminals do report when dealers see leveraged traders, banks, central banks entering orders in to the market. Unfortunately they cost a lot as the info is worth $$ the sooner it comes out. Some of this 2nd hand info *may* be included in the news service your mt4 broker offers. There are a few services that offer competitive pricing for order info, a couple free sites as well that pass down the info too.

Headline would be something like this: EURUSD- Swiss bank recent buyer. Asian offers 1.3510/15, more /35. Bids 1.3465/60... You can mark these levels on your MT4 and help use that info along with your trading strategy. Here's an example I made for someone last week.. kinda sloppy example, but you get whats going on.

Headlines:
EURUSD- ACB offers 1.3580/00, larger 1.3610 (ACB stands for an Asian Central Bank.. they like to trade quite often)
EURUSD - Strong ACB offers into 1.3600 still noted

you need to look at Deutsche bank flow ,UBS,Goldman sachs and JP morgan to know where the flow is as they control 50% of spot volume i.e not available for retail but sometimes they tip their hand by commentaries/analysis which is very useful to go contrarian after a sharp move in the said direction-they are usually right in the short-term tricking the muppets to buy or sell then flip their positions.Some guys can pick it off the charts by looking at candle charts,while most of us use a mixture of yesterday,weekly,monthly high lows; we look to fade this levels,we use volume profile(from futures) and market profile looking to fade extremes

(best one I've heard in a while )

Thank you EmeraldEyes, Vitez, Pemully and WhiteHorse for your help, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and ideas. I emailed my broker - Oanda and they suggested I look at their order flow. Unfortunately their data includes only Oanda customers, meaning retail customers. I agree with pemully, that only few large banks' data is needed to determine where huge players' interests lie.

Yep, EmeraldEyes the data is worth lots of $$ and I wish I could justify getting a Bloomberg terminal. I've been playing with infront terminal (1 week free trial) and while they have almost everything Bloomberg has, they do not have FX level 2 quotes...

Check out Oanda's News. I think they sometimes post large orders in their BUZZ headlines.

Btw, there are large bids from central banks @ 1.20 on Eur/Chf and 7.75 on Usd/Hkd

You have to have contacts at these banks, better yet hedge funds. They hang out and chat on bloomberg, but that doesn't mean you get to chat with them. Having these terminals will not do much for the average retail guy.

By this, you mean prop traders at banks? Or dealers?

The levels will be technical, or based on volatility unless some news comes out and catches everybody wrong, then it's just a scramble.

FX is OTC market and only at the FX desks of the largest banks you can have info about the orders. Only the prop desks of the banks trade for speculatice profit. Customer desks only fill orders of the bank's clients. Sales delaers works with the clients, while the traders manage the bank position. Tha latter create some of the flows at the end of the day because they have certain position limits. You can guess these flows and trade after the orders are filled (London cut strategies).
Info about the order can be obtained from MNI, Reuters, etc. I thnik it is pretty reliable but you can't be sure 100%. After all these years I can make pretty good guess where the orders are and I'm right most of the times. The orders are usually around support and resistance levels. Everybody can see the pattern after spending some screen time.
The point is not where the orders are, but how we can use this fact in our strategy. Every morning I draw my rad map where I try to idntify these levels with large orders. Then I watch the price action and quotes when the market approaches these levels and open position if they nocfirm the orders. Fore example if you see large white body cnadle on 1M chart around support you can assuem that some large buy orders are filled. Larger upticks evidence the same.

Fxism, you can get "L2" from lots of places but as mentioned above it's not a centralised exchange so you'll only be seeing part of the market. And from what I recall last time I looked at a few spot fx brokers, it was only DOM not T&S, which imo is worthless on its own. It's not like you're likely to see a bank sitting on the bid anyway. As far as I know, talk of banks sitting here or there is just talk, maybe it's real, maybe not. The info is easily accessible for free via Oanda's IFR feed and 4cast if they still have them, and MNI if you want to pay a couple hundred bucks a month or so.