The Spread, A Forex Brokers Profit

In our example from the previous article, we actually alluded to a few things. The first, is that there were a few costs in our example trade of 1 lot of GBP/USD. The hidden cost is the “spread” or the commission the broker earns for completing our trade.

How Forex Spreads Work

Unlike stocks or other tradeable securities, there is no set commission rate. With stocks, you may be accustomed to paying $6.95 to complete an online trade. In forex, we don’t pay commissions, instead the cost to trade is built into the forex bid and ask prices.

Bid and Ask

The bid and ask prices can be confusing, but we’ll make as much sense of the two prices as we can. The bid price is the price you would get when selling the pair. The ask price, is the price the market is asking for the pair. For instance, the pair GBP/USD may offer a bid price of 1.6101 and an ask price of 1.6104. If you bought the pair at 1.6104, you would immediately be able to sell the pair, at a loss, for 1.6101. Your net profit/loss would be negative 3 pips.

Why the Difference?

The difference between the bid and ask price is the illusive spread mentioned above. This spread is for the broker, for completing our trades. By selling to traders at one price, and buying from traders at another price, the broker is able to make money by completing our trades. A spread of 3 pips would create a profit of $30 for the broker, for each lot traded. This may seem to be horribly expensive, $30 a trade vs $6-7 for stocks, however the spread in forex is actually less than in the stock market.

Stock spreads vs. Forex Spreads

Spreads occur naturally in the stock market as well as in the foreign exchange market. The difference is that the forex market is not a centralized market like the stock markets. When you go to buy stock, there is a spread in the bid/ask price which is profit for the marketmaker, or the person who sits on an exchange and completes orders. In forex, the spread goes to the broker, who is a market maker in that they pair two orders to complete a trade.

All in all, spreads on the stock market are much, much higher than on the foreign exchange. The spread on the foreign exchange market adds up to roughly .03% of a trade. In the stock market, the spread is often 20 times greater, or about .6% of the cost of the trade PLUS the commission to complete the trade. All in all, the costs of trading the foreign exchange market are much cheaper than the stock market.