Whats the difference between dealing desk and non-dealing desk? What are the benefits and disadvantages to the traders?
Great question, Starlo 
FXCM offers our clients the choice between two types of forex execution: No Dealing Desk (NDD) and Dealing Desk. The execution you choose impacts your trading experience and spreads. We recommend NDD execution because we believe it provides our best all-around trading experience. FXCM also offers a Dealing Desk execution option for traders whose primary concern is low spreads for 12 of FXCM’s most popular currency pairs.
The Dealing Desk offering, however, has certain trading limitations. To determine which execution offering is best for you, please consult the table below.
[B]No Dealing Desk (NDD)[/B]
In the NDD model, FXCM does not take a market position, eliminating a major trading conflict of interest. Dealing Desk brokers may actively trade against your positions. They can profit when you lose. Alternatively, they may lose when you profit. Because of this, Dealing Desk brokers are incentivized to manipulate your orders. They may for example place restrictions on stops and limits or re-quote your orders.
FXCM’s NDD execution model does none of this. Your orders automatically fill from the NDD price feed, which is the best available bid and best ask prices from all of our liquidity providers plus FXCM’s mark-up. Additionally, your orders are anonymous to the liquidity providers. They cannot see your stops, limits, or entry orders; they only see market orders coming from FXCM. The video below has more details.
[B]Dealing Desk[/B]
When operating a Dealing Desk the firm may actively be taking a position in the market, which exposes the firm to market risk. When you are long, the Dealing Desk may be short. When you are short, the Dealing Desk may be long. So your losses can equate to the Dealing Desk’s profit. Alternatively, your profits can equate to the Dealing Desk’s loss. Certain strategies expose Dealing Desks to more risk, such as automated strategies or strategies that trade at a high frequency. To better manage their market risk, some Dealing Desk firms actively intervene in their clients’ trading by re-quoting orders, delaying execution, skewing prices, or widening spreads.
Dealing Desk execution is used by many brokers in the forex industry. However, FXCM’s Dealing Desk execution offering is unique because it shares important features with our No Dealing Desk (NDD) execution, such as:
[ul]
[li]No re-quotes
[/li][li]No restrictions on stops and limits
[/li][li]Orders can be broken up and filled at multiple prices (partial fills)
[/li][/ul]
If you are trading on our Dealing Desk execution and your trading style exposes us to more risk than we’re comfortable with, FXCM may, at our sole discretion and at any time, change your execution type to NDD. This is how FXCM can comfortably offer both options without having to resort to some of the common “dealer intervention” practices listed above which take place at many forex brokers.