Dislikedlasty answered well. I'm gonna add some bank trader perspective here as well. 1. Bank traders deal in non-standard amounts of real money, not lots of imaginary sizes. 2. The real money equivalent of 100 lots of, say, USDJPY, is 10 million USD. In the institutional world, 10 million of anything should clear within seconds if not a split second. 3. If a retail trader actually has the sophistication to trade 100 lots, then perhaps he shouldn't really be executing thru a standard retail broker. 4. lasty's answer was great, but the only real way for...Ignored
Perhaps this is because Oanda is taking the other side, then hedging it with the real market (other speculators).
So perhaps Oanda itself gets a little slippage when they offset the trade, but I never do.
I don't really know the dynamics (you probably do)
Also, EBS and Reuters only do 230 billion a day in business (they print the daily averages every month). Where do you suspect the other 95% of the volume comes from? I read that 500 billion is done over the phone, but that still leaves a substantial amount of volume unaccounted for.
Be hopeful in a winning position, and fearful in a losing position.