The Ultimate Guide to
What is ‘Last Look’ in Online FX Trading?
‘Last look’ is a term that many online traders may have come across in the small print of their broker’s terms and conditions for order execution. Traders may not have paid a great deal of attention to this caveat or truly understood what it refers to. However, unless a trader is working from pure direct market access (DMA)/Straight Through Processing (STP), then their market maker broker, the liquidity provider (LP), may take advantage of ‘last look’ rights when processing trade price orders.
What Does ‘Last Look’ Mean?
When trading forex pair CFDs within a broker’s platform, a price feed on a particular market is provided live. When placing a trade, whether short or long, the opening price should theoretically be the ‘ask’ price given at the moment the trader hits the button to place a trade. However, ‘last look’, gives the liquidity provider, which will be the market maker broker (unless trading with a DMA/STP account), the right to reject the other side of the order at the quoted price. The order is then executed at the next best price that the liquidity provider can offer.
From the trader’s point of view the problem with ‘last look’ order processing is that if the ‘ask’ price is adjusted at the last look, point of execution slippage can result. If the order is passed down through several liquidity providers to find a closer match to the originally provided price, slippage can be significant.
Why Do Market Makers and LPs Retain Last Look Rights?
With slippage one of the most significant irritants to traders, it might not seem like it makes a great deal of sense for brokers to practice last look if they wish to be attractive to traders in a competitive market. And yet, some brokers still retain last look rights and act on them by rejecting orders. Why?
Because spot FX prices are not set by and processed through a centralised exchange as is the case with equities and commodities, market makers are more exposed to quick changes in the conditions of underlying markets. ‘Last look’ gives a market maker a couple of hundred milliseconds to reject an order price if it considers it no longer makes business sense to offer it.
Pros & Cons of Last Look for Traders
Many traders argue that ‘last look’ is a relic of the past and there is no longer any justification for liquidity providers to employ it. In the earlier days of online trading, the technology of liquidity providers was much slower than that of professional buy-side traders and ‘last look’ was a necessary precaution to prevent them from being regularly badly stung. Buy-side advocates of ‘last look’ being abolished maintain that the technology infrastructure now available to liquidity providers long ago caught up and it now simply gives them an unfair edge over traders.
Other cons for traders that last look can result in is that not all price quotes provided on feeds can necessarily always be executed on. This means that slippage becomes a more regular event and execution speed of placing trades can be reduced when last look refusal is employed.
However, last look is not all bad for traders. Having the right to reject orders if they wish means that market makers are able to offer tighter spreads than would otherwise be the case. Bigger orders can also be placed as last look means liquidity providers are less concerned about being badly exposed.
If traders do want to avoid exposure to last look, trading with a regulated ECN broker is one of the best ways to go about this.
