For Customers Log in
Contact Us

Last Look Meaning

A practice in foreign exchange and some digital asset markets where a "liquidity provider" (usually a large bank or market maker) is given a final opportunity to reject a trade after a "taker" has already accepted their quoted price. This usually happens within a millisecond "latency window." The purpose of "last look" is to protect the market maker from "toxic flow"-traders who use ultra-fast connections to "snipe" stale prices.

If the market maker sees the market has moved against them in the microsecond it took the order to arrive, they can use their "last look" privilege to cancel the trade. This practice is controversial because it can be abused by market makers to only accept trades that are profitable for them, leading to "slippage" for the retail trader.

In response, many modern "Transparent" or "ECN" style exchanges have banned last look, favoring a "Firm Quote" model where a price shown must be honored.

← Back to Glossary

Explore our services
Providing liquidity in the cryptocurrency market?
Authorize on our platform and do it smarter with FM Pulse.
pic

FM Marketplace

A reliable and high-performance crypto liquidity marketplace for institutions and businesses.

Learn more
pic

FM White Label

Launch your fully branded B2B crypto trading platform in under one week.

Learn more
pic

FM Liquidity Match

Crypto OTC-as-a-Service infrastructure for enhanced monetization and trade control.

Learn more

Scale your business, leave the hard work of your trading needs to us

Reduce your integration costs and operational risk across multiple access points with our platform

Get started