NDD: No Dealing Desk
Also known as: NDD broker, agency model, non-dealing desk, A-book execution
What is it?
A no dealing desk broker passes your order straight to external liquidity providers instead of taking the other side of it, so it earns from spread and commission rather than from your losses. The contrast is with the dealing desk, or market maker, model, where the broker is your counterparty. On a dealing desk the firm books your losing trade as its own revenue, which creates a structural conflict of interest: it does better when you do worse.
Dealing desk vs no dealing desk
Dealing desk (market maker)
- The broker is your counterparty and books your losing trade as revenue.
- Spreads are often fixed or smoothed, with no separate commission line.
- Requotes and rejections appear on orders that would be costly to fill.
- Structural conflict: the firm does better when your strategy does worse.
Cheap-looking, but the counterparty gains from your losses.
No dealing desk (agency)
- Orders route to external liquidity providers; the broker takes no side.
- Raw variable spread plus a stated commission per round turn.
- Fills come at market, including slippage in both directions.
- Revenue is volume-based, so your result is irrelevant to the firm.
Costs are visible and the incentive conflict is removed.
An NDD broker running the agency model has no such position. Whether your trade wins or loses is irrelevant to it, because its revenue is the same either way - a commission on volume, or a small markup on the raw spread. That difference shows up in execution rather than in marketing copy.
NDD accounts typically quote variable raw spreads that widen during news and tighten in liquid hours, charge a separate commission, and fill at whatever the market offers including negative slippage. Dealing desk accounts more often show fixed or smoothed spreads, no commission line, and requotes or rejections on orders that would be costly to fill. For an automated strategy the NDD behaviour is usually preferable, because a rejection disrupts a bot far more than half a pip of slippage does.
Why it matters: A no dealing desk broker is not your counterparty, so it has no financial reason to requote or reject the orders your strategy depends on filling.
The execution model decides whether orders are filled at market or gated by a counterparty whose revenue falls when your trades work.
Real-world example
A breakout EA that met repeated requotes on a fixed-spread dealing desk account filled every order on an NDD raw-spread account, at the cost of 0.3 pips of average negative slippage.
How SignalBots handles it
SignalBots signals are timed to entry levels that assume your order actually fills, so connecting them to a no dealing desk account gives the setup the execution it was measured against. See /risk-warning.
Pro tip
Judge an NDD claim by account behaviour rather than the label: variable spreads, a separate commission line and slippage in both directions are what an agency model really looks like.
Common pitfalls
Choosing a zero-commission fixed-spread account because it looks cheaper, then losing more to requotes and an embedded markup than the commission would have cost.
Frequently asked questions
Is NDD the same as ECN?
ECN is one kind of NDD and STP is another. Both route orders externally; an ECN matches them in a shared pool of participants, while STP passes them to a set of liquidity providers the broker has agreements with.
Does NDD guarantee there is no conflict of interest?
Not on the broker's word alone. Many firms operate both models and route orders to either book depending on the client, so check whether your specific account type is A-booked rather than what the homepage claims.
Why do NDD spreads widen so much during news?
Because they are the real market's spreads. Liquidity providers pull quotes around a release, the pool thins, and the best bid and ask move apart. A fixed spread hides this by charging for it all day instead.
Is NDD always cheaper?
No. Raw spread plus commission is usually cheaper on major pairs in liquid hours, but on exotics or in thin sessions the total can exceed a fixed quote. Compare all-in round-trip cost, not the headline number.
Does the execution model matter more for a bot than for manual trading?
Yes. A discretionary trader can wait out a requote, but an EA sending an order at a computed level either fills or fails, and a failed entry can leave a strategy holding risk it planned to offset. Your capital is at risk.
Trading involves substantial risk of loss. Historical and backtested results do not guarantee future performance. Read the full risk warning.
