auto trading MT4 in highly volitile envioraments

Firstly sorry about my spelling.

Ok I wrote a small program which basically does the following:

These are just example numbers for cable

1) I give it a price. Assume 2.0000 a sl of 10 pips and a TP of 1000 pips.
The current market price is 1.9900

2) The program places a BUYSTOP order at 2.000 with SL and TP specified above.

3) The follow scanario happens The price hits 2.000 and then falls back to 1.9900. My SL gets hit. Which is fine I take the 10pip loss on the chin. The program then puts a new BUYSTOP order with the numbers given above. (My program has been working fine for about a month)

All this is fine and working as expected but yesterday some thing happened around the time of the US interest rate decision.

4) Market went up to 2.000 and I bought.

5) Market went down and my stoploss was hit

6) My program tried to put in a new BUYSTOP at 2.000 but a 130 error was reported!!! a 130 error is invalid stops!!

SO how come my program failed?

Thanks in advance!!!

the move was too fast after the US interest rate decision.
so the orders could not be carried out
data-processing problem probably

Hi rizwanmalik,

At the release of news, bid/ask spreads can widen. So I am assuming the release of news caused you to get stopped out due to a larger bid/ask spread. Upon being stopped out by the larger spread caused buy the news, the now larger spread, did not allow your new order to be filled because your broker requires a specific number of pips a stop/limit order can be placed away from the current bid/ask (spread plus a predefined number of pips, different from broker to broker and pair to pair). This information can be returned by:

MarketInfo(Symbol(),MODE_STOPLEVEL)

So at the exact time your EA/Script tried to send the stop order the spread was widened, which in turn widened 'MarketInfo(Symbol(),MODE_STOPLEVEL)' making your 10 pip stop obsolete until market conditions settled and returned to the normal spread levels...

Just a theory,
lucidlamp

ps: InterbankFX does not require 'MarketInfo(Symbol(),MODE_STOPLEVEL)' so stop/limit orders can be placed as close to a pip from yout strike price, whereas other brokers require a pre-defined pip level away from your strike price. I guess this is why InterbankFX spreads are a bit higher than ODL Securites, for example...?