CHF move as a broker "Stress Test" - Which tried to honor SL's?

1. Jan. 15, 2015
   Today's surprise drop in the value of the CHF Swissy is a good opportunity to "Stress Test" your broker and VPS if you use one. If your broker tried to honored your SL settings on a CHF pair with a fill to close close to your SL level, could you please post their name in this thread?
   
   Despite what they state on their home page every FX broker will play this event differently. Let's use this opportunity to help each other by pointing out the best and worst brokers. Current FX volatility will only be increasing and knowing which brokers do best by their clients will be critical for our survival and success.
   
   Example: My Excel Markets broker filled my SL on USDCHF at the lowest price about -1700 pips from my open price rather than near my SL of -135 pips. They supposedly use ECN/STP to provide them excellent liquidity. I had a live chat with them and they of course said "an SL is a Market Order...". I countered that I was hoping that their extreme ECN/STP liquidity might have gotten me out somewhere before the exact bottom. They will followup with me, and I will post their decision. Fortunately I was testing a new VPS so was only trading a .03 lot on USDCHF and lost $650. My sincere condolences to those of you who lost more.
   
   There are many reasons why one broker might provide a better exit fill than another. One certainly is if they have substantial liquidity. But there could be others as well including the ethos of the company. If you feel your broker did good by you during this market move, please provide the details and post their name here or PM me.
   Thanks

Jan. 19, 2015
A few days have passed since the SNB dropped the bomb of disconnecting the Swiss Franc from the Euro. Many have posted their helpful anecdotes and analysis of their brokers response. The possible benefit of this thread can be to, as a group, to isolate which brokers are dependable going forward. The political/economic instability of the EU, the terrible money management of the U.S. Treasury, and the economic sanctions against Russia will guarantee that the currency markets will only be getting more turbulent in the future. There may in fact, be a flock of Black Swans heading our direction.

The broker shake-out to date has included one of the largest, FXCM, and one of the smallest, Excel Markets, so traders should be careful in drawing quick and simplistic conclusions as to what broker profile guarantees security in the future. I think it's safe to generalize that in recent years most Spot FX traders have concluded that market-maker type brokers are to be avoided, while brokers providing ECN/STP access to liquidity are guaranteed to be safer as they provide un-manipulated access to the market. As the outcome for brokers now begins to shape up, it seems to me that many ECN brokers were driven to huge debts as they were the debtor of last resort after all their Interbank trades were settled. So better in day to day trading, but not necessarily safer from CHF-NBS type events. In contrast many of the brokers that survived unscathed use a market-maker business structure which always has them hedged against their clients trades.

My guess is that after the dust settles, it will be clear that the two types of brokers that are best for the trader are, a.) brokers who provide straight-through access to deep liquidity pools but also have >>excellent practices for monitoring their clients trades and aggressively hedge their total risk to the market<<, and, b.) market-maker brokers who by nature hedge their risk to the market, and either by concern for reputation (ie, future business), or due to stringent outside oversight,are prevented from using predatory practices on their traders. Unfortunately one of the most important requirements, 'excellent practices for aggressively hedging their total market risk', is the most difficult to identify and list on a profile chart of "The top 25 FX Brokers". One way to gather this critical information will be to observe the carnage of the recent Black Swan event, and see which brokers are left standing, and determine, Why?.

Yunben on the CHF:Black Swan thread posted the chart below which was compiled at Forexmagnate-com. It shows the current scorecard for brokers.
http://forexmagnates.com/forex-indus...-time-updates/

To be frank, I doubt that we will see a long list of brokers who filled the SLs in this situation.

That's about the same situation as a week-end gap ... if your SL is within the gap, it will be filled at the 1st available price at market open.

I am also curious how it will look and if there will be any bankrupcies due to the fall.
I am with Oanda which I think is safe so am curious how oanda behaved in this situation

This is the risk of directional trading with leverage, stop losses become market orders when triggered and can only be filled if there is someone willing to trade the other way. You would actually be better with a bucket shop as they are supposed to take the other side of your trade, but in this case I would imagine their systems would go offline unable to cope with such a swift large move. Some people probably tripled their accounts on one trade should there trades be revoked?

Im using Oanda. I had my SL at 1.1748 and they have close my trade @ 1.17473. I hope that is a great job.

FXCM and FxPro honored my SL Exactly on 2 CHFJPY and 1 AUDCHF open positions.

Best,
B.R.

I use fxcm and had my SL at 1.1980 on EURCHF. I wasn't stopped out until 1.0236. Thats over 1700 pips. Got totally wiped out on the trade plus a lot more. I'm not sure what to do now since I'm so far in the negative. I submitted a ticket to them for auditing but am still waiting on a response.

Hi,

I use Flatexfx a German Broker. I was stopped out exactly at my Stop 1.1990. So no more loss than my risk at the start of the trade weeks ago.

Thanks for the thread and responses. I feel for those who are in an uncertain situation. I believe brokers should be holding enough funds to honor stop losses else should not be approved as brokers.

I'm with Alpari, still waiting, alot of the brokers providing retail trading will be doing super overtime with the baglog of trades overnight. I will try calling again tomorrow. I had the following:

USDCHF - PENDING SELL ORDER which had a 400 pip TP
EURCHF - PENDING LONG ORDER at somewhere like 1.2006 with a SL at 1.19800 this got executed and closed but the price was much much lower like 1.0, so I expect slippage but not by that amount
Then I had a SELL ORDER at 1.2 with no TP but I rang and got 1.0 as a closing price but this has shown only a small profitin my MT4 platform which when I checked my calculations should be about 10 fold hihger. Will report back over tomorrow to see if I get any news?

What has happened was a shocker...my heart goes to all my fellow retail investors..though a proper ECN/STP broker shouldn't worry so much..The Market Makers and 'bucket shops' who trumpet and hoodwink clients about them having No Dealing Desks or are STPs but who take positions against their own clients are the using their Book B are the ones in a real bind..well the tide sure receded and has left the swimmers(brokers) all chilled up..lets see who is in their briefs and who was starkers..already IG Markets is the hole to the tune of $45 million...http://leaprate.com/2015/01/ig-group...works/....what about other brokers?..maybe to make it easier is there any broker who is known to have honoured their stop losses?..lastly is there any broker who gave Guaranteed Stop Losses(of course one is charged a higher fee) and still honoured them?

This is from MB Trading:

 

1. You can lose more funds than you deposit in the margin account. A decline in the value of securities that are purchased on margin may require you to provide additional funds to the firm that has made the loan to avoid the forced sale of those securities or other securities in your account.

So this means you can go in deep shit with them..., this is BS!

I received an email from Excel Markets broker with the following message. Sadly their explanation about being stuck with no liquidity on the CHF makes sense. I'm trusting their assurances about client segregated funds being available for immediate withdrawal are accurate. It will be a pity if, as they say, they must close their business as they seem stand up in their business practice.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://ci4.googleusercontent.com/pr...llogosmall.png

The dramatic move on the Swiss franc fueled by the Swiss National Bank's unexpected policy reversal of capping the Swiss franc against the euro has resulted in rare volatility and illiquidity. Both our primary and backup liquidity providers became unresponsive or illiquid for hours after the event. The majority of clients in a franc position were on the losing side and sustained losses amounting to far greater than their account equity. When a client cannot cover their losses it is passed onto us.

ALL OPEN POSITIONS MUST BE CLOSED BY 5PM NEW YORK TIME OR THEY WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY CLOSED AT THAT TIME. NEW POSITIONS CANNOT BE OPENED AS OF THIS TIME.

ALL CLIENT FUNDS ARE IN SEGREGATED ACCOUNTS AND NEVER USED FOR LP MARGINS. 100% OF POSITIVE CLIENT EQUITY OR BALANCE IS SAFE AND WITHDRAWABLE IMMEDIATELY.

Global Brokers NZ Ltd. STP's 100% of order flow and has sustained a total loss of operating capital. GBL can no longer meet regulatory minimum capitalization requirements of N$1,000,000 and will not be able to resume business. Losses incurred on trades that could not be exited due to illiquidity were losses incurred directly with the liquidity provider and we do not have the ability to reimburse those. Please note the interbank market for francs was illiquid for hours after the event and no traders with an open franc position were able to close it for a significant period of time, at any broker.

News of the impact of this event on companies and traders is just beginning to come to light. As Directors and Shareholders we would like to offer our sincerest apologies for this devastating turn of events, and to thank you for being such a supportive group.

We ask that you place withdrawal requests for your account balance at your earliest convenience and allow for minor delays as our team begins to experience higher than usual service volumes.

Best Regards,

Excel Markets, Global Brokers NZ Ltd.

I wonder how many brokers will share their fate. Bad day, very bad day, just proves how dirty game it can be.

Globalprime slipped 45 pips past USDCHF SL.. No biggie..

However, clients of mine mirroring my trades are wiped out. One in excess of 11k.

currency wars!
these sissy swissy are gonna suck my dick!

I got burned bad by Paxforex they are thief's I had 2 short positions with them and around 5am eastern time paxforex sl my trades at 103.26 it never reached that level at all what. When I called them they blamed there feed in short I ended up loosing on the trade of my life. point is please be careful who you choose as your broker some of them as I found out the hard way did use this opportunity to scam the small guys

those who had SL honoured at reasonable level - can you please clarify if it was guaranteed position or non guaranteed?

GlobalPrime has been garnering rave reviews since they launched..they dont do any MM or bucket shop BS..this was good enough to be fair to them..one can ascribe the slippage to server latency as prices changed by the millisecond and as little as even 3ms...Jeremy and his team have been doing good stuff over there..

so far the confirmed score board for honest-to-God brokers who also have prudently managed risk internally stands as follows following Black Thursday;

+Global Prime(Australian)
+Flatefx(German)
+Tickmill(Seychelles)
+Dukascopy(Switzerland)
+Liquid Capital Group(UK)

Last edited on 19th January 2015 @ 6.04pm GMT

if only Global Prime accepted US citizens as clients ...