The spot currency trades placed by retail speculators (traders) are made directly with the trader's own "market maker"; that is, the market maker is the counterparty and takes the other side of the transaction. Thus, many of spot trades never enter the interbank market.

Retail speculators (traders) are less vulnerable to being scammed if the broker passes the spot trades directly to the interbank market, without the use of a dealing desk. The claim "No Dealing Desk", used in advertising by various forex brokers, is not a guarantee to the trader, and does not define how spot trades are actually made.

When trading with any dealing desk, speculators (traders), especially low-capital retail speculators, suffer from many disadvantages including the following:

• Unless they have accounts at different firms, they have no competitive prices to trade against; i.e., they must accept their market maker price or not trade.
• The market maker may or may not show them the actual prices from the forex market; there may be a delay or "price shading", where prices displayed are off market (e.g., a given rate is shown slightly higher than on the interbank market if the market maker expects the price to increase, though protected against arbitrage by the spread). Thus the market maker has better information with which to determine what prices to display.
• Traders are often encouraged to over-leverage their positions, increasing the likelihood traders will receive a margin call, which will close their positions immediately.