While most brokers choose 3rd party liquidity aggregation solutions such as Integral or Currenex some brokers prefer to develop their own liqudity aggregation services. I’m not sure what is the rational behind that as 3rd party liquidity aggregation providers with years of track record should be much more professional than any retail broker, no matter how big it is.
Nonetheless, brokers like MB, FXCM, FXOpen and Deltastock built their own liquidity networks, perhaps in an effort to cut the middleman or not being interested in disclosing any of their IT and trading information to other parties.
It seems that PFG chose the own aggregation route and it will be interesting to see over time how good its network is, specifically in order routing and latency. From the first glance though it seems this is just another STP service and PFG’s clients at this point are only price takers (STP) and not price givers (ECN).
PFGBEST foreign exchange clients of all levels now can access the technology of Typhoon, a “liquidity aggregator” that PFGBEST created to allow the world’s largest banks to compete with the best bids and offers for both retail and institutional traders. Typhoon gives individual investors, CTAs, hedge funds, money managers and institutions equal and anonymous access to the true interbank foreign exchange (FX) marketplace, optimizing trading opportunities for all traders.
“Typhoon ensures straight-through processing, so that all orders are automatically matched to the best available bid or offer without dealer desk intervention. This model ensures efficient, transparent price discovery and order execution in the world’s fastest-growing market, which is global foreign exchange,” said PFGBEST President and Chief Operating Officer Russ Wasendorf, Jr.
“PFGBEST is the customer’s single source of liquidity, and with Typhoon, they have access to some of the largest banks and global forex liquidity providers that are competing to provide the best quotes,” Wasendorf added.
PFGBEST built the pioneering Typhoon price aggregation system in response to demand from customers for direct market access to tier one bank prices. With just one account with PFGBEST, customers have the power of the Typhoon system to find the best bid and offer spreads available in a pool of deep liquidity.
Typhoon can be accessed through all of the PFGBEST electronic trading applications, including both proprietary platforms and direct API products. Some of the electronic platforms that offer Typhoon as a price source are BESTDirect 8.0®, BESTDirect Mobile®, BESTDirect Web®, BESTDirect Ninja Trader®, BESTDirect ProTrader®, BESTDirect Navigator®, and eSignal for BESTDirect®. Additionally, anyone can open up a free test account to trade over Typhoon. The best part about that is that the test account will never expire.
PFGBEST inaugurated Typhoon and began distributing the capability to its foreign exchange client base some seven months ago, and dollar volume through the system increased more than 40 percent since January.
