I have just seen this spike on GBPCHF with a spread of over 50 pips.
As you can see on the attached image, I had a pending order, that should have been filled (and most likely instantaneously closed). I’m sorry the chart is on daily timeframe, but i cannot change the timeframe, as it’s the weekend and i cannot connect to your services. The questions that arise are: Why did I not get filled? You have 10+ providers-> was 50 pips really the lowest spread you could give? With sudden spread explosions like this one, wouldn’t it be a good idea to have the option to trigger the stoploss with the opposite price side? (as in: I have a short position which will be stopped out when the BID price hits a certain level)
If I may ask out of curiosity do you have the NDD account or the dealing desk account? Either way I agree thats a high spread even for NFP in which neither one was a USD pair. Was there any other news that could have cause this? I still fail to see it get this high though
I didn’t know FXCM offererd dealing desk accounts. I have a standard account with them (that required 2k to open) which should be NDD. There was no news that i am aware of. Dukascopy shows a similar spike though. With a high of 1.5173/1.5143 (Ask/Bid). So thats way below what i’m seeing on FXCM.
Since I can now connect to the fxcm servers, here is a 1H chart.
Another odd thing just came to my attention:
According to the pending orders-list, I placed the pending order at 12:30, which is EXACTLY while the spike occured. To the minute. Having seen that and being absolutely certain, that I did not do that, I downloaded the account statement, which said that i have opened that order the day before, more than 12 hours earlier than than the platform tells me I did.
Well, with IBFX i saw 200 pips spread after Japans earthquake, so i am not suprised. And off course with any CHF pair you will have that issue over an over.
First, let me start by saying that if you ever have questions regarding the execution of a trade on your live account, you can complete this online form to log a case. The Trade Audit Committee will then review your case in detail and respond with a resolution. If there was an error in our trade execution, we will make the appropriate adjustment to your account.
That said, I can speak generally about your question regarding what can cause spreads to widen dramatically as you saw. You mentioned that your stop was triggered at 12:30 GMT last Friday. That corresponds to 8:30 AM New York time when a major US employment report was released called Non-Farm Payrolls. When the NFP report comes out on the first Friday of every month, the banks around the world that provide liquidity in the forex market will widen their spreads. Since FXCM simply passes on the prices we receive from our liquidity providers with a pip markup, you will see the spreads on your platform widen accordingly. During NFP, the spreads will widen even for major currency pairs such as GBP/USD and EUR/USD. For a currency pair like GBP/CHF which is traded significantly less, the spreads widen even more dramatically.
You asked whether it’s possible set a stop loss order on a short position that will trigger based on the bid price instead of the ask price. That’s not a standard feature on the Trading Station or most trading platforms and for good reason. When you are in a short position, it’s the ask price that determines the price you can close the trade, not the bid price. In a short trade that’s moving against you, by the time the bid price reaches your stop level, the ask price where you could actually exit the trade could be much worse.
However, you might like to know that it is possible to have a special stop loss order programmed in the way you describe as a custom feature. Our Programming Services department can code a stop loss for you that would trigger on the bid price for a short position, or on the ask price for a long position.
FXCM’s dealing desk uses the FXCM NDD price feed as a base to derive prices and execute orders. The only difference between the prices on the two execution types is that the markup on dealing desk is 1 pip lower than on NDD. That is why our dealing desk execution shares important features with our NDD execution such as no re-quotes and no restrictions on stops and limits.
In regards to your question about spreads, even though USD is not in the GBP/CHF pair, liquidity in all major currencies will be affected as a result of NFP. That means GBP and CHF will be affected and it follows that the GBP/CHF price will be affected, even more so than for more popular pairs such as GBP/USD and USD/CHF.
