Whois & Analysis for interactivebrokers.com

Direct market access (DMA) is a term used in financial markets to describe electronic trading facilities that give investors wishing to trade in financial instruments a way to interact with the order book of an exchange.

Normally, trading on the order book is restricted to broker-dealers and market making firms that are members of the exchange.

Using DMA, investment companies (also known as buy side firms) and other private traders utilize the information technology infrastructure of sell side firms such as investment banks and the market access that those firms have, but control the way a trading transaction is managed themselves rather than passing the order over to the broker's own in-house traders for execution.

Today, DMA is often combined with algorithmic trading giving access to many different trading strategies.

Certain forms of DMA, most notably "sponsored access," have raised substantial regulatory concerns because of the potential for a malfunction by an investor to cause widespread market disruption.

Interactive Brokers LLC (IB) is a U.S.-based electronic brokerage firm.

It is the largest U.S. electronic brokerage firm by number of ; it also is the leading forex broker.

The company is headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut and has offices in Chicago, Hong Kong, Shanghai (a representative office), Sydney, and Zug.

It is a subsidiary of Interactive Brokers Group, Inc., which has offices in thirteen countries.

The foreign exchange market (forex, FX, or currency market) is a global decentralized market for the trading of currencies.

This includes all aspects of buying, selling and exchanging currencies at current or determined prices.

In terms of volume of trading, it is by far the largest market in the world, followed by the Credit market.

The main participants in this market are the larger international banks.

Financial centres around the world function as anchors of trading between a wide range of multiple types of buyers and sellers around the clock, with the exception of weekends.

The foreign exchange market does not determine the relative values of different currencies, but sets the current market price of the value of one currency as demanded against another.

Fixed income refers to any type of investment under which the borrower or issuer is obliged to make payments of a fixed amount on a fixed schedule.

For example, the borrower may have to pay interest at a fixed rate once a year, and to repay the principal amount on maturity.

Fixed-income securities can be contrasted with equity securities - often referred to as stocks and shares - that create no obligation to pay dividends or any other form of income.

An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is an investment fund traded on stock exchanges, much like stocks.

An ETF holds assets such as stocks, commodities, or bonds, and trades close to its net asset value over the course of the trading day.

Most ETFs track an index, such as a stock index or bond index.

ETFs may be attractive as investments because of their low costs, tax efficiency, and stock-like features.

By 2013, ETFs were the most popular type of exchange-traded product.