How to read the live board
What each row is measuring, why the leader keeps changing, and what the board does when a firm stops sending data.
PropSpread ResearchJul 18, 20265 min read
The short version
- Every figure is one firm's sampled spread converted to dollars for a one-lot round turn, with its published commission added.
- Ranking runs over a rolling fifteen minute window, so the order moving is normal rather than a sign something is wrong.
- A firm with no feed shows a waiting state, and a firm that goes quiet keeps its last values behind a visible staleness note.
One row, one firm, one cost
The board looks like a price screen and behaves like a cost screen. Each row is a firm, each column an instrument, and the figure inside is not the raw quote a terminal would show you. It is that quote converted into estimated dollars for one standard lot opened and closed once, with the firm's published round-turn commission added on top.
That conversion is the entire point. A raw account quoting 0.2 pips and a standard account quoting 0.9 pips cannot be compared until both sit in the same unit, and neither can be compared until commission is included. The board runs that arithmetic on every sample, so the column you scan is a like-for-like cost rather than a marketing number.
Reading a row honestly
Under most figures sits a smaller line comparing the current value with the last fifteen minutes of samples for that firm. Tighter than average and wider than average are tinted differently, and each carries a sign and an arrow, so the direction never depends on colour alone.
Cells flash when a new sample lands, and flash in a different tone when the spread widened rather than simply moved. None of it is a forecast. It is a readout of what the last snapshot contained, which is why a widening flag around a scheduled release is ordinary rather than alarming.
Why the leader keeps changing
Ranking is computed over a rolling fifteen minute window instead of the newest tick, so a single extreme quote can neither crown nor sink a firm. Two firms priced within a few cents of each other will trade places through the session as their samples land. An order that never moved would mean the window was too long to describe current conditions.
Position also depends on which firms had valid data during that window. A firm that stops sending keeps its last received values on screen with a visible staleness note, rather than disappearing quietly or being recalculated behind your back.
Turning the board into a decision
Scan the instrument you actually trade rather than the headline pair. A firm that leads on EUR/USD can sit mid-table on gold or on indices, because the liquidity behind each instrument differs and so does the commission model applied to it.
Then take that figure to the cost calculator, set your real lot size and trade count, and read the monthly total. The board tells you who is tighter right now. Your own frequency decides whether the difference is worth moving an account for.
Written by PropSpread Research. Figures referenced in this guide are indicative snapshots from connected feeds, not tradable quotes, and the arithmetic behind them is published in full in the methodology. Nothing here is financial advice.