Different brokers with different prices at the same time?

Good Day,

This is my first post at the factory and I am hoping the experienced folks here can help me get something cleared up.

I have been studying FX for some time now and today decided I was going to open some demo accounts to start demo trading, so I proceeded to open two demo accounts (both on the Meta Trader platform) one with IBFX the other with ActiveTrader. To my surprise I find out that the prices for all the pairs are different. Now considering I am looking at price when the market is closed I find this to be very strange. The following are examples:

EUR/USD IBFX - 1.30250 ; ActiveTrader - 1.3055
USD/JPY IBFX - 99.230; ActiveTrader - 99.21
EUR/GBP IBFX - 0.88090 ; ActiveTrader - 0.8817
USD/CHF IBFX - 1.16710 ; ActiveTrader - 1.1658

I have read many posts that traders with Live accounts who use Oanda as their broker used/review charts from another broker to enter into trades under the premise that the price is the same. Is it normal for prices to differ from broker to broker especially when the market is closed?

Thanks in advance for you help and assistance.

Cheers,
Mikali

It's normal to see a small disparity both in price and spreads. A lot of people trade with Oanda and use different charting packages for their analysis. Price won't be exactly the same and neither will the spreads, but they are usually close enough except on the smallest time frames.
But you do need to watch the spreads. When prices are close or the same between platforms don't assume the spreads are too. Oanda's spreads are high at the week's open, then they gradually return to normal over the course of a few hours. Same with the weekly close. Normally their spreads aren't terribly bad but they do change.

remember that brokers opens and closes their servers at different times and therefore you will experience different prices.

for instance, ibfx closes 1 hour before market closes on friday and opens 1 hour after market resumes on sunday/monday. SHOULD there be any further movements during these times, you will definitely get the huge disparity.

fxcm reported that eurusd went up to 1.3075 during early australia session. but at ibfx, it was still closed and opened at 1.3040s only.. go figure..

Hi billflet,

Thank you kindly for your quick response, I am glad to hear that the price differences can be expected from broker to broker. Thanks for pointing out that the spreads also differ this in fact was one of the reasons for opening demo accounts with two different brokers that and the fact that ActiveTrader also provides charts on other financial markets such as gold, silver, Lt crude etc.

Cheers,
Mikali

That's interesting, I was under the impression that all brokers closed shop at the same time (i.e. 4:30 PM EST). Thanks for pointing that out, looks like I need to do some additional reading and investigation into brokers and how the operate.

Cheers,
Mikali