What is Direct Market Access (DMA)?

DIRECT Market Access (DMA) means that when you place a trade online, your order is sent directly to the registered stock exchange for execution. In other words, it is a platform or mechanism whereby fund managers and institutional investors can enter their orders directly into the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange's Automated Trading System (ATS) through a Client Binding Terminal without manual intervention by the broker.

Individual investors typically do not have direct market access. While trade execution is usually immediately enacted, the transaction is fulfilled by an intermediary brokerage firm. With direct market access, the trade is executed at the final market transaction phase by the brokerage firm.

The order is accepted by the exchange for which the security trades and the transaction is recorded on the exchange's order book.

In the traditional way of placing a trade, you give an order to your securities dealer/broker by telephone or online and your securities dealer/ broker then requests a quote for that order from a market maker.

A market maker is someone who is equally ready to buy or sell a stock; they quote both a bid price and an offer price at all times and hope to make a profit from the difference between the two. With the rise of fully electronic trading, a new type of market was developed, which is now known as the order-driven market.

allows you to take greater control of your DMA trades by using a broker to place your orders directly on the central market along with all the other market participants.

The introduction of can also be an opportunity DMA for local registered exchanges to link with regional exchanges.

This can in turn establish a harmonised regulatory environment for the issuance and trading of securities across the region.

The has resuscitated the Odd Lot Board with ZSE effect from June 1, 2019, for effective implementation of the DMA.