CFD - Contract for Difference - is a derivative of shares. When you buy CFD's, you are buying shares, usually on margin.
DMA - Direct Market Access - refers to the trading platform you are using to buy shares, or CFD's. If your trading platform provides access direct to the underlying market, without any 3rd party intervention, that is DMA. ie your orders are placed directly into the asx market.
The other trading platform you hear about is Market Maker. That is the broker provides the prices you can buy and sell for - a common market maker is CMC markets.
Not true, as I understand it. When you buy CFD's, you are not buying the actual shares, but buying a contract over the difference between the buying and selling price, or vice versa.
CFD is the product - DMA (Direct Market Access) or MM (Market Maker) is the conditions you trade under......
In a market maker situation, the bookmaker generates the spread (buy and sell prices).
In a DMA platform, you are actually physically trading in the underlying market - i.e. you can place buy and sell orders via level 2 market depth, or the actual trade list.
My experience - I have both a DMA and a MM platform with IG - both are consistent, I normally just use the DMA platform to see level 2 depth and buy and sell OTC MM's......
Again, as I understand it from my experience with CFD's plus reading, there are two main varieties of CFD's, these being DMA = Direct Market Access and MM = Market Maker.
DMA means your order is immediately placed directly into the real market to compete for fulfillment along with all the other actual buy and sell orders.
On the other hand, MM means the CFD provider provides you his price, much like a bookmaker provides you a price when he frames the market, like at a gambling fixture. Naturally the MM will frame his price to minimise his chance of losing and/or to maximise his chance of winning.
For this reason, many followers of CFD's prefer DMA to MM.