Bid and Ask prices

I have had several requests lately that the indicators displaying the Bid price no longer match the price on the chart. I checked several platforms and it appears that the Bid and Ask prices on the Market watch are not the same as the prices on a chart?? I have since altered the indicators to now display the Close price not the Bid. Surely this will affect the take profit and stop loss levels on a chart? I tried a demo Sell trade and noticed that the Ask price on the chart had to be significantly below the on chart take profit level before the trade closed? Is it just me and I have not noticed this before or has this been like this for a while? I checked some early screenshots that had indicators with the Bid price coded into them and the chart Bid price matched the indicators so one has to ask when did this happen I guess more importantly why would it be like this?

Hi, I check both my MT4 and MT5 platforms (my MT4 and MT5 belongs to different brokers), they are working fine. I also check against your Signal Bars MT5 indicator, it is also displaying the bid price correctly.

The code for price in the MT5 Signal Bars uses Close[0] so I assume that for your MT5 the Close[0] and Bid return the same price. but as you can see on my screenshot the Bid in the Market Watch and the Bid on the chart return different prices.

What I'm suggesting is as you can see my platform, I don't have discrepancies between my market watchlist prices and those on the chart indicated by BOTH the ASK and BID Lines, not just the Bid price. But it appears that on yours is different and I am not suggesting that yours is not an issue, I am saying there maybe a remote chance that it could be due to data feeds issues or connection issues causing a lag somewhere. But of course, there is no way I can be certain on this, I hope you understand that I am just trying to help you brainstorm the possibilities, the only way to find out why is to check/feedback to Metatrader to enquire more about this.

Hi cja
It looks like OK with me - seems something went wrong on your end

When you see a difference in prices (Bid vs Close[0]), it is because your broker is charging you an extra spread to trade with them compared to their underlying data provider.

I have two live accounts that both use the same underlying provider, GAIN Capital.

The chart on the right is an account that I opened a long time ago with a broker that was bought out by another broker multiple times until it ended up as AllyInvestForex, but they use GAIN Capital as their provider now.

The chart on the left is an account with Forex.com, but the underlying provider is GAIN Capital. (Forex.com and GAIN Capital might actually be the same "company"; I don't know the exact relationship, but to me they're virtually the same thing; but Ally is definitely not the same, just using Forex.com/GAIN for them to get into the FX trading business).

The charts are identical Close[0] prices. The Ctrl+K displays the same "Ask" prices as each other. (NOTE: Because of internet differences to the different trade servers, and depending on how loaded or over-loaded each of these MT4's are, there can be a few seconds where they don't show the same Bar0 chart prices, but I waited for a slower moment in action for them to line up. The history of chart prices agree completely, no differences in OHLC on the two charts AFAIK).

HOWEVER, the actual prices I would pay to take a buy or sell trade with each of them are different! The left chart has a lower spread, 4.4, vs. the right chart, 5.8 for this highly volatile GBPJPY pair. (Guess which account I no longer fund and actively use?)

Specifically, both charts show 161.825 Close[0] price, and both show the Ctrl+K (buy) line at 161.869.

The left "Order" window agrees with the chart, and those are the prices I would actually pay to enter a trade.

The right Order window *disagrees* with the chart. The Bid is 161.818 (an extra spread of 0.7). The Ask is 161.876 (another extra spread of 0.7). The total extra spread to get in and out is 1.4p more. That broker is getting an extra spread if I trade with them (so I don't, anymore).

On both charts, I have a tool that displays what the actual trading spread is ( "SymbolInfoInteger(symbol,SYMBOL_SPREAD) / pipScale" ). I'm also displaying "Bid". Notice in the chart on the right, Bid is 161.818 (the price I would actually Sell at) vs. the chart Close[0] price of 161.825.



P.S. Though I've named brokers, and gave you my chart vs. Order prices, this depends upon which actual servers one connects to, since each company may have more than one server. It is likely true that they charge different spreads to different customers (based on account size, type, and history as a "broker"). Ideally one becomes a top-tier customer and pays the least spread + commission to trade.

That makes sense, thanks for the information.