Why are charting website and broker graphs different?

Hi everyone,

I have recently came across something that I cannot explain:
I use tradingview for my technical analysis and IG as my broker, now I have noticed that when comparing the EUR/USD graphs, well they are different. The price is the same but the candlesticks are not.

Is there a reason for this?

Thanks

A couple of things - I can’t see IG’s charts but spreadbetting providers show charts that depict their own prices on a particular market, but his should only be a tiny amount different from the underlying market itself.

More significant is where they take the open/close of the day. Forex is a 5/24 market but the brokerages and SB providers don;t always offer their access to trading on the same basis. In any case, they have to decide some point in the clock to terminate the “day”. e.gm I use LCG for SB and daily their charts always show the current date as yesterday. That’s because their"day" ends at 2200, so today’s candle on their daily chart is dated 31/01.Of course, the chart provider might use a different time as open/close, such as London market hours or include some London evening hours: only way to know for sure is to check. I slao use a chart provider who offers an early version of the forex daily, at 1730 London time, using London close prices, updated in the evening by a later version, after NY has closed.

Its bloody annoying but there’s no set industry standard.

Hey Captain… Possibly what you are seeing is… IG use an average of the buy sell levels ie: 122.53 sell - 122.83 buy will show on their charts as 122.68.

They run a 1 price display unlike most brokers who show buy and sell level lines displaying the spread. Confused…??

I was when I first started with them, it makes it hard to trade as a newbie hence I left that broker…

Hope this might help.

There is a possibility that you might see small difference in the charts when you are looking at different brokers and websites. There could be few reasons why that could be happening.

  1. Different Time Zone: Opening and closing time of candles on charts could be different on website and broker, resulting in formation of charts that could be slightly differnt. For example, opening time with some forex broker is 22:00 GMT, with some 22:05 GMT, With some 22:15 GMT and with some 22:30 GMT which result in different opening and closing time for different candlestick time frame.

  2. Decentralized forex market- As we know that forex market is decentralized and there are quite few LPs and prime broker that are providing the liquidity. And all the brokers they get liquidity from different LPs and prime broker and there is a possibility that you would see few pip difference in their pricing. Some time the pricing from these prime brokers could be same and some time it could be off by few pips from each other.

  3. Futures Vs Spot: Forex market provides trading in spot market and if you are comparing the spot price with future prices you would see different formation of charts. Sometime spot prices can match with future price and sometime it can trade higher and lower based upon multiple factors.

The charts website’s graphs are different from the broker’s graphs because some of the brokers have mark up added to the spread which would change the price quotes. Moreover, some of the market makers would add spread to the existing spread to fault the trading prices of the instruments. These market makers place trades against the traders to make their own profits.