Same broker, the same Old Song

Anyone out there using IBFX AU? I caught them pants down cheating on me. I just funded my dormant account with them. I previously closed this account because of their prohibiting trading during 5 minutes pass the Asean Session. Recently they said the company is under new management, and I thought it is time for me to go back trading with them. I used an indicator, actually a semi manual EA that also record a trades profit on it. I found out that there was a big descrepancy appearing in my mt4 profit column against the profit shown in my EA - 0.01 to 0.88, lagging far behind. Of course they have a lot of alibi when I brought the matter with them. I will be moving soon to another broker. I just wanted to let you know guys that in case you are considering IBFX australia, just pause a few seconds, they are not as good as advertised.

So you are saying that your EA is showing a trade should have had a profit of X, but IBFX is saying that the profit was Y ? Can you show any screen shots or further explain?

Sorry, I did not capture a screen shot as I am in hurry to exit my trades. Yes you are right, profit showing on my dashboar EA supposed to tally with the trade profit on my screen. But in this instance, the two did'nt agree, one is ahead and the other lagging. This had been corrected after I inform them of the discrepancy. While it appear that I did not lost anything, someone trading with this situation could affect your decisions. At .10 lot profits are moving like a turtle. This is the only explanation i can share. I am still trading with them, but not for long. My intention is to inform other traders so that they can make their choices.

Hi Edd:

Not to cowboy your conversation, but I am trading with IBFX (US) for 4 years now (started 2007) and just recently (Dec, and now again yesterday) started having problem with stop order slippage. I am just trying to figure out if this is just IBFX, or if this normal for every broker?

Other than that, I noticed IBFX has more slippage issues than in years past on even the smallest of orders, and bigger spreads on the majors in recent months, especially after NY closes and before Sidney opens. The other thing that really ticks me off is the intentional hiding of the swap rates: they used to be published right there on the website, then, one day, woosh! - disappeared! I contacted IBFX and was told "swap rates change too often to publish". Since then I have been keeping tabs on the swaps manually, once a week, and guess what? They changed about once per pair per month! Too often, right...! Finally, there is the stop order slippage issue that I have a question about:

So here is what happens: Let's say you have a EUR/AUD sell stop open at 1.22222 like I did last night 3:30am GMT (already morning in AU). That order had a take profit at 1.22002.

The RBA makes it's surprise announcement about the cash rate being 4.25%. In 1 minute, the price drops to 1.21400.

Great, sweet profits here I come! In a perfect world, I would have been dealt in at or near 1.22222 and found my profit target almost the next second.

Instead, IBFX goes and opens my sell order at 1.21781 and immediatly closes me at 1.21829 for a loss of -48 points/pips.

The way it looks on your MT4 platform is like this: one second you see your working order flashing green, you never see it in your active trades, just the next moment you see your balance decreased, the order having disappeared. You go over to the Account History, and to add insult to injury, you have a nice green highlight on your last order! Congratulations, we got you a better price than even your profit target... Except you lost money on the order, too bad...

My question, if I may insert it into this thread, is whether this is just IBFX, or other brokers, too?

IBFX will have me believe that this is a common industry practice. My problem with this is that here they open an order at a price below my take profit target and then pocket the spread. If I try to open a sell order with a profit target above the entry price, I get an "invalid parameters" error. So clearly, the platform is designed to prevent you from making such a mistake... except where the broker benefits, then it's possible and actually an "industry practice". This feels like the "Bank takes all" field at the Roulette table.

PS: this is not a question about market volatility and available prices, I am aware of low liquidity and other issues during news events, blah blah blah. I just want to know if the "industry practice" is really as wide-spread as IBFX claims.

P.PS: If anyone is interested and needs this, I can share with you IBFX's official explanation that they gave me. I also have all the charts, reports, screenshots etc. documenting this.