Depth of market on retail platforms is less informative than it looks

[Amanhasnoname]

MT5 and a few other platforms offer a depth of market window. It shows bids and offers stacked at different prices, and it looks like a proper order book. In forex, it rarely is.

What appears is typically the broker's own aggregated quote ladder, not the total interbank book. Sizes shown are often placeholders or capped values, and levels can vanish the moment someone tries to trade them. Two brokers show completely different depth for the same pair at the same time, which makes clear how little the screen says about real liquidity.

Some brokers do pass through genuine depth from their liquidity providers, and the display on those accounts is more meaningful. Telling them apart takes tests, like sending small orders at multiple levels and seeing what fills.

Relying on DOM imbalances as a signal without that check can lead to patterns that were never real. A heavy-looking bid might just be the broker's pricing engine, not a crowd of buyers.

Does the depth window on your platform match actual fills, or does it vanish when tested?