Providers of up to the second prices play a very important role in the market although they are not active market participants. They contribute largely to the efficiency of the market by providing instantaneous prices sourced from hundreds, if not thousands of dealing rooms allowing dealers and traders to analyse and anticipate price changes more effectively.
As mentioned before any market maker can quote a price he sees fit to quote and that is the real price a client can deal on. Clients unhappy with prices cannot refer to some global price as the price. How do prices stay in contact? Price vendors. Price vendors gather prices, usually the most recent price from many dealing rooms, average the prices and then broadcast the most recent averaged price back to their subscribers, which in most instances include the dealing rooms originally providing these prices.
Real-rime charting services make use of such price information and most users of these services always keep in mind that these prices are only guidelines and representative of certain sections of the global FX market.
It is also useful to consider that there will always be a "global spread", which is never fixed and which will be wider during turbulent times: a terrorist attack or an interest rate announcement by the Federal Reserve.
The practical movement to fixed, very narrow spreads on retail level testifies to the efficiency of the market, but no retail trader should build a trading strategy on the concepts of orderly, consistent, non-fluctuating, rhythmic pricing. The opposite, in fact, is more characteristic of the foreign exchange market. Large spread changes occour, created by the volatile impact of news and events.
This is one of the reasons why the practice of scalping taking many small profits very often is an unsound business idea in retail currency trading.
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