FXCM Group has published its execution quality metrics for the month of March 2020 this Tuesday, with spreads for cryptocurrency and certain foreign exchange (forex) instruments being influenced by high levels of volatility.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused    Liquidity   Liquidity Liquidity is at the core of every broker’s offering. It is a basic characteristic of every financial asset - be it a currency, stock, bond, commodity or real estate. The more liquid an asset is, the easier it is to sell and buy on the open market. Foreign exchange is considered to be the most liquid asset class.Brokers can source liquidity from a single or multiple source, thereby delivering to their clients enough market depth for their orders to get filled. The main characteristic of liquidity is its depth, which will determine how quickly and how big of an order can be executed via the trading platform.Understanding LiquidityLiquidity can be internal or external depending on the size and the book of the broker. Companies which are large enough and have material client flows consistently are creating their own liquidity pools from the order flow of their clients, thereby internalizing flows and saving on costs to send customer orders to the interbank market. By doing that however they are exposing themselves to carry the risk on the trade.Liquidity providers can be prime brokers, prime of primes, other brokers or the broker’s book itself. Traditionally brokers are split between internalizing flows and offloading trades of their clients to different liquidity providers.Generally, retail brokers and their clients prefer more liquid assets which lead to better fill rates and less slippage. When there is lack of liquidity on a certain market, slippage can occur - the order is executed at a price which is the closest available to the one requested by the client. Liquidity is at the core of every broker’s offering. It is a basic characteristic of every financial asset - be it a currency, stock, bond, commodity or real estate. The more liquid an asset is, the easier it is to sell and buy on the open market. Foreign exchange is considered to be the most liquid asset class.Brokers can source liquidity from a single or multiple source, thereby delivering to their clients enough market depth for their orders to get filled. The main characteristic of liquidity is its depth, which will determine how quickly and how big of an order can be executed via the trading platform.Understanding LiquidityLiquidity can be internal or external depending on the size and the book of the broker. Companies which are large enough and have material client flows consistently are creating their own liquidity pools from the order flow of their clients, thereby internalizing flows and saving on costs to send customer orders to the interbank market. By doing that however they are exposing themselves to carry the risk on the trade.Liquidity providers can be prime brokers, prime of primes, other brokers or the broker’s book itself. Traditionally brokers are split between internalizing flows and offloading trades of their clients to different liquidity providers.Generally, retail brokers and their clients prefer more liquid assets which lead to better fill rates and less slippage. When there is lack of liquidity on a certain market, slippage can occur - the order is executed at a price which is the closest available to the one requested by the client. Read this Term issues for a number of assets due to the higher levels of volatility, with gold, in particular, seeing a surge in demand, whilst also struggling with supply issues caused by the crisis.

During the month of March, the retail broker reported that the active trader average spread for XAU/USD was 15.7 pips and the active trader effective spread was 16.3 pips. This is significantly lower than the previous month, which posted spreads of 35.1 pips and 32.3 pips, respectively. It is also down on a yearly comparison, as the average spreads published in March of last year was 35.1 pips and 35.0 pips, respectively.

As Finance Magnates reported, in March,    Liquidity Providers  Liquidity Providers A liquidity provider (LP) constitutes either individual and/or institution that functions as a market maker in a given asset class. Broadly speaking, liquidity providers will act as the both the buyer and seller of a particular asset, thus making a market. In the equities space, many stock exchanges rely on liquidity providers who make the commitment to provide liquidity in a given equity. These liquidity providers commit to providing liquidity in the hopes that they will be able to make a profit on the bid-ask spread.In doing so, these entities theoretically ensure greater price stability and also improve liquidity by making it easier for traders to buy and sell at any price level. Market liquidity providers also oversee an important service and take on a significant amount of risk.However, these are still able to profit from the spread or by positioning themselves on the basis of the valuable information available to them.Analyzing Liquidity Providers Relationship with BrokersIn addition, liquidity providers also delivering interbank market access to retail brokers. They are typically large multinational investment banks, or other financial institutions that can be non-bank entities. Each liquidity provider is streaming executable rates to the broker whose aggregator engine is selecting the best bid and ask and streams it to clients to deliver the best possible spread.The broker is the direct counterparty to all trades executed with the liquidity provider and typically only uses them to offload flows which it finds uneconomical to internalize. That said, some brokers are sending all of their flow to liquidity providers.Liquidity providers have a set of characteristics which are determining their suitability and reliability - such are order rejection rates, spreads, and latency. Brokers which aren’t monitoring the flow adequately are risking to deliver to their clients’ bad fills, which consequently result in customer complaints since the customer is consistently not getting the displayed or requested price. A liquidity provider (LP) constitutes either individual and/or institution that functions as a market maker in a given asset class. Broadly speaking, liquidity providers will act as the both the buyer and seller of a particular asset, thus making a market. In the equities space, many stock exchanges rely on liquidity providers who make the commitment to provide liquidity in a given equity. These liquidity providers commit to providing liquidity in the hopes that they will be able to make a profit on the bid-ask spread.In doing so, these entities theoretically ensure greater price stability and also improve liquidity by making it easier for traders to buy and sell at any price level. Market liquidity providers also oversee an important service and take on a significant amount of risk.However, these are still able to profit from the spread or by positioning themselves on the basis of the valuable information available to them.Analyzing Liquidity Providers Relationship with BrokersIn addition, liquidity providers also delivering interbank market access to retail brokers. They are typically large multinational investment banks, or other financial institutions that can be non-bank entities. Each liquidity provider is streaming executable rates to the broker whose aggregator engine is selecting the best bid and ask and streams it to clients to deliver the best possible spread.The broker is the direct counterparty to all trades executed with the liquidity provider and typically only uses them to offload flows which it finds uneconomical to internalize. That said, some brokers are sending all of their flow to liquidity providers.Liquidity providers have a set of characteristics which are determining their suitability and reliability - such are order rejection rates, spreads, and latency. Brokers which aren’t monitoring the flow adequately are risking to deliver to their clients’ bad fills, which consequently result in customer complaints since the customer is consistently not getting the displayed or requested price. Read this Term, market makers, and exchanges struggled to accurately price the commodity, and some, in fact, even stopped pricing gold altogether for a time. At the same time, spreads widened considerably, and although things have returned closer to normal, the liquidity issues still remain.

For the cryptocurrency pairs, FXCM averaged 28.1 pips on BTC/USD, which is slightly up from the 25.7 pips average recorded during the previous month. When measuring the spreads achieved in the same month of the previous year, last month’s spreads are higher than the 25.7 pips average in March of 2019.

EUR/USD spreads increased 300% MoM on FXCM

The average spread for the EUR/USD, the most traded currency pair in the world, increased on both a monthly and yearly comparison for FXCM, coming in at 0.4 pips. Against February of 2020, this is higher by 300 per cent, up from 0.1 pips. It is also higher than the 0.2 pips noted in March of the previous year.