Transaction Costs – What You're Really Paying

The Trading Floor with David Axtell · Mar 10, 2026 · 16m

You see the spread. You think that's what the trade costs. It's not even close.In Episode 7, David Axtell breaks down the real cost of executing in FX markets — and explains why the visible bid-offer spread is just the tip of the iceberg. For institutional-size orders, implicit costs from market impact, timing risk, and opportunity cost typically run two to five times higher than the spread itself.David walks through how market impact follows square-root scaling laws — doubling your order size doesn't double your cost, it increases it by roughly 40%. He explains why splitting a large order…