The instant, yet guaranteed for a brief period trading thing doesn't make sense to me. To my uneducated eye, it seems like either they have to pad the trade like a bookie does, in which case they'll lose business to a real exchange, or they'll lose money from people using that time gap to their advantage.
Can someone explain how it works to me?
Can someone explain how it works to me?
The only legitimate way I can understand the feature is if they've decided to open themselves up to a certain amount of losses in order to provide a feature to distinguish themselves in the market. They figure they'll mostly be able to fill with the public order book, and only occasionally have to act as a market maker at relatively recent market price. The idea probably sounded a hell of a lot better to them when they imagined a tight bid/ask. With the spread occasionally sitting dollars apart today on much higher volume than they're used to it's no wonder they're turning it off for a while.
