FX Liquidity Providers: How Institutional FX Liquidity Works
Spot FX trades about $3 trillion a day through layers of banks, non-bank market makers, prime brokers and venues. How that liquidity chain works — and how to judge the LPs in it.
Institutional FX & Liquidity
How institutional FX liquidity works: bank and non-bank LPs, prime brokerage, prime of prime, last look, aggregation, A-book/B-book and toxic flow.
Institutional FX & Liquidity: an overview
Spot FX is a fragmented OTC market where liquidity is streamed, aggregated and intermediated through layers of banks, non-bank market makers, prime brokers and venues.
This section explains how that liquidity chain works, how LPs price and protect themselves, and what brokers and funds should measure when choosing counterparties.
Latest Institutional FX & Liquidity research
Browse all research Key concepts
- Liquidity provider
- A bank or non-bank firm that streams executable prices to clients or venues.
- Last look
- A short window in which an LP may accept or reject a trade request at its quoted price.
- Prime of prime
- An intermediary that gives smaller firms access to tier-1 prime brokerage credit and liquidity.
Research roadmap
What we cover in Institutional FX & Liquidity
Our editorial plan for this section. Published guides are linked; the rest are in research.
- Live FX Liquidity Providers: How Institutional FX Liquidity Works
- Soon The Rise of Non-Bank Liquidity Providers in FX
- Soon Prime of Prime: How Smaller Firms Access Institutional FX
- Soon FX Prime Brokerage: How It Works for Institutions
- Soon Last Look in FX Trading Explained
- Soon The FX Venue Landscape: Where Institutional FX Trades
- Soon FX Liquidity Aggregation: Engines, Bridges and Routing
- Soon A-Book vs B-Book Brokers: Risk Models Explained
- Soon FX Global Code Explained for Trading Firms
- Soon Transaction Cost Analysis in FX Trading
- Soon FX Primary Venues Explained
- Soon Toxic Flow: Markouts, Segmentation and Pricing