As a broker you have a direct access to your clients’ trades executed and/or waiting to be executed with limit orders for Buy/Sell/Stop Loss and/or Profit Booking already placed at Pi, Kite etc. by your clients and this gives a kind of an inside information to you about the Total Buy and Total Sell positions of all of the Zerodha Clients.
Do you trade against this Trade Book in capacity of a proprietary trading firm?
This question is not about Zerodha, it is about all such brokers who have a similar access. Just wish to understand it academically.
Unlike some of the developed markets out there, in India all orders are fired on the exchange directly, and brokers are not allowed to fill it. So yes, every broker can look at all the orders placed by their clients on the exchange, but you can’t really trade against it as they are all pending on the exchange somewhere in the market depth. Also exchanges flag all such trades where trades are matched between clients of the same brokerage firm. Also if this is only for information, it is unreliable as most orders placed are usually canceled or modified.
People at Trading End will never know what things are done, being done or can be done at Broker End with direct/indirect association with the concerned exchange under many classified concepts such as Market Making, Proprietary Trading etc. for example.
Let us not expect a Broker to tell all the tricks of his Trade on a public platform. It is none of our business also.
One of the best ways to know about all such inside secrets is to open your own Brokerage company. Join their Club and Know it All.