As one of the world's major Forex brokers, IC Markets provides traders with a wide range of currency pairs and CFDs to trade. IC Markets also operates as an ECN broker, which means that it links traders directly to the interbank market. This enables traders to benefit from low spreads and high liquidity. Below is the relevant information provided by IC Markets.

Is lc Markets an EcN/STP broker or a Market Maker?

This is one of the most frequently asked questions. The dificut partin understanding ECN and STp meanings is that those have been interpreted differently bymany people. There are three main business models used by forex brokers which difer bythe way the transactions are handled and orders are executed. ECNSTP and Market Makers.

ECN: ECN stands for 'Electronic Communication Network which is simply a technical term that is used to describe how banks and iquidity providers connect toeach other to fom a bid and ofer price. n the Forex industny, it can be used toidentify providers who usethis type of pricing mechanism in order to ofer rawinterbank pricing to retailtraders. Under this model your broker wilstream raw prices and your trades willbe offset with another client, a liquidity provider or heldinterally by the broker. This usualy results in faster trade execution. This is distinct from order execution that may resultin an offsetting order placed with aliquidity provider.

STP: This term stands for'traicht Through Processing and is used when a forex and cfD provider proceses al trades at market prices obtained from a liquidityprovider, this price is simpy passed on bythe broker. This is not dissimilar to the ECN pricing modelin that the price is not altered and there is no dealing deskintervention when the trade is processed, hence it is known as STP

IC Markets is the issuer of the products it providesWe consider ourselves to be a forex provider offering the ECN pricing models we source our pricing fromexternal unrelated iquidity providers,these prices are passed onto you with no dealing deskintervention. in order to provide you with beter pnice certainty and toensure fast execution speed we do not ofset each and everyposition with ourliquidty providers. We do this in order to provide you with a better overalltradingexperience.