Trading knowledge libraryWhat Is a Market Maker BrokerMarket Basics
Market Basics
What Is a Market Maker Broker
A market maker is a broker that writes both prices on its own board and is the other side of your trade. This paper shows you the shop and the wholesale market behind it, the three things a desk can do with your trade, what one real trade looked like at the desk's board, and the two signs on your own platform that say you are trading with one.
A market maker is a broker that makes the market for you: it writes both prices on its own board, a price it will buy at and a higher price it will sell at, and when you trade, you trade with the shop itself. At the open of 3 September 2026 the board read 1.15865 to buy from you and 1.15880 to sell to you — a pip is the fourth decimal place, so a gap of a pip and a half. Behind the shop is the wholesale market, the banks, where the same euro was 1.15872 to 1.15873. The shop can buy and sell there at that narrower gap, and the difference between its gap and the wholesale one is how it is paid.
What it does with your trade
The moment a desk takes the other side of your trade, it has a choice you never see. It can match your trade against another client's opposite one and hold nothing, having been paid the gap from both sides. It can keep it, carrying the risk on its own book, so that your loss is its gain and the reverse. Or it can pass it on, buying the same amount from a bank at the wholesale gap and keeping the difference. Your ticket looks the same through all three doors: a fixed gap, no fee, and the broker on the other side.
