Brokers and slippage...

I'm just curious if anyone has had reliability issues with fills from their broker(s.)

For instance I had two similar trades both long EurUsd this morning in two different accounts (I trade two accounts, one for my own system and one for a signal service.)

Anyway, both accounts had stops placed, one at 1.2846 and the other at 1.2847.

FXCM filled me exactly at 1.2847 but Forex.com allowed 11 pips of slippage and filled me at 1.2835.

I had really liked Forex.com until recently, but this is the third case of bad fills from them and I'm thinking about opening an account elsewhere.

I know all of you have an opinion

I'd like to hear them.

Chris

Ive noticed a lot of slippage with Forex.com recently too. One of my orders was filled 19 PIPs away from my original order just the other day. I heard that Forex.com has moved into a new office and all the problems theyve been having might be because of that, not sure though.

They will always give execuses, but what the hell these execuses will do for anyone???

Please excuse this response if it's old news or if it holds no substance. I've only been trading FX for about a year but traded futures on and off for several years. As far as the FX market goes, since the currencies can react to the slightest bit of news at the drop of a hat, it's really no surprise to me that using stops to enter a market can result in bad fills quite often. I did a quick peek at a 1 minute chart for the EUR/USD and saw several bars where each bar represented about a 10 to 12 pip movement for that bar. If you are not able to watch the market to enter but use stops, it's likely that your stop got hit during one of these wide ranging bars. A closer look at a tick chart may be more useful if you know the exact time that your order was filled. I enter with market orders around pivots or MACD patterns and have really had no bad fills. Maybe 1 pip at the most. I'm trading through FXSOL but use CMS's charts. I'd look at what time your stops are being hit and then go to a tick chart to see what price action was actually doing at that time. If it's a 'normal' bar, then I'd question your broker. Hope at least some of this helps.

Good Trading To All

I've been using MG Financial and have never seen any slippage on orders - HOWEVER, they are generally market orders.

It's good that you are mentioning MG Financial cause I have opened a live account with them already.

I would like to know how fast is the execution of the market orders? Have you experienced any slippage on stop or limit orders??? Have you ever noticed during the major news that the spreads are widening ?

Sorry for all those questions, but I haven't funded the account yet

I have never seen the spreads widen.

I use the Java based platform from MG cause I'm running OS X (Mac) and I have become very comfortable with the platform. On a market order I set my Buy/Sell box up and bring it to the front and use the keyboard space bar to execute at the opening mark. Since the platform is Java based for Mac I ensure that I have nothing else running as Java running over an extended period becomes a memory hog and your chart updates and execution times slow considerbly (2-3 seconds). Other than the normal Java stuff, execution is excellent. Their charts update much faster than Refco's.

Two down-sides:

1. You cannot hedge on MG.

2. You can't close individual tickets like most of the other major platforms. If you have two positions open on MG with both being the same currency and you decide to close; it takes the earliest ticket and closes it or subtracts the lots from it.

I had problems with this at first, but I have now accustomed myself to the platform and have adjusted my trading style to ensure no mistaken closures.

If you are running Winblows, the MG platform is very smooth and I haven't seen any lag time whatsoever since it is a native Win32 app.

Like any other platform, execution times can be affected by hardware and anti-virus settings as well.

Between the two, I would say my Mac executes and updates slightly faster even on wireless since I have no need for anti-virus or a firewall on it.

I have had good customer support from them. I have had several email conversations with their people concerning questions I had and they studied my daily summary and sent me a response with an explanation in about two hours.

Hope that helps.

MuddBuddha,

Thank you so much for your feedback about MG, I really appreciate it and you made me more comfortable about them..

I knew they were good to some extent when I first saw their website and experienced the trading platform. When I first thought of how poor the platform is compared to, for example, GFT one, I told myself, it's better to have a bug free trading platform having the basic features, than having the best trading platform in the world that crashes every 30 minutes!!!

Thanks again fellow trader and have a nice day.

Regards

Regarding forex.com - I used them for a couple of years and was generally okay with them, but would get fast spikes that did not even show up on the candle charts [graphically]. Using TV I would look at the data feeds from other brokers and would see a different candle, especially tails and wicks, for the same pair and time frame, for the time in question. When I would call them and point out what I had found they were never able to give me a satisfactory answer. Combine that with the fact that they don't provide any Volume data in their TV feed, and I went looking for alternatives. Right now I'm with IG and find them much more reliable in the USA then OANDA or FOREX.com.

Slippage is ok if it doesn't happen too often. Should be also taken into account in your trading strategy, like average slippage per trade as an additional cost.