I am using MT4 on a Classic account. I am on the Classic 2 Server I believe.
I do understand that during volatile sessions, price slippage might occur more frequently because of alot of factors however I have noticed that on several occasions during volatile times;
[ul]
[li]When I place an order and the price goes in my desired direction, I get a ‘request a requote’ window
[/li][li]When I place an order and the price moves against me, it fills out my order at the price I placed my order
[/li][/ul]
Do you have any explanation as to why? I would think that Alpari makes money with the spread however I have read a post by the CEO himself of Alpari that they hedge against their clients for those trading more than 5 lots?
I also have noticed how the ‘cancel’ function does not really work in MT4 as 80% of the time, my order will get executed a few seconds after.
Regarding customer service experience, Alpari UK representatives were great at answering questions quickly before and during the process of opening an account ie within a few minutes to 2 days however now that I have opened an account with them and email them questions, I have noticed that it takes longer to get my questions answered.
Not too happy about that however I will be trying the live customer chat support to see if I can get my questions getting answered quickly.
If you are trading with the momentum of the market, and therefore by definition in the direction of least liquidity, then re-quotes are an inescapable fact of life that everyone has to deal with, from the busiest InterBank desks to the smallest retail trader. Having said that, re-quotes are dependent on your trading style. If you are buying in a rising market, that is buying when everyone else is trying to buy, or selling in a falling market, you will regrettably get more re-quotes.
Consequently, when attempting an instant execution order you may be re-quoted within a few seconds (and in the case of a pending order you may experience slippage). Orders are never guaranteed because if volatility is high, prices can be missed and we may not be able to obtain a quote for you at the price you requested. Orders are also sometimes filled away from the desired price due to gaps in the market. This occurs because currency prices can sometimes be very volatile or liquidity can be thin.
To put it quite simply, this is just the physical enactment of the Laws of Supply and Demand.
The only current alternatives are Direct Market Access Accounts (DMA). We at Alpari (UK) refer to this as a Pro account.
The basic difference here is that prices are not held static (for a few seconds) like non-DMA accounts, they constantly change. Orders are sent on a Fill or Kill basis where although you can avoid re-quotes, the risk is not getting a trade in (or out) at your preferred price at all. DMA accounts however do charge a commission (in lieu of spread) for each trade that you place.
To minimize re-quotes on non-DMA accounts:
“Enable the maximum deviation for quoted price” checkbox and set it above 10. This implies the max deviation is just 1 pip. To prevent re-quotes during volatile trading times, you may want to set the max deviation between 10 to 40 points (1 to 4 pips).
If you use an MT4 indicator to detect spread widening, please make sure that your indicator is configured for the 5 decimal pricing system that we use. Otherwise a 3 pip spread-widening will be shown as 30 pips by the indicator.
Another thing to consider is your internet connection to our servers. Test your latency by pinging the Alpari trading servers or just ping alpari.co.uk. If your latency is high (higher ms numbers), then this is one of the factor causing your orders to be re-quoted.
For example, let’s say a client is complaining about re-quotes. He gives us an account number and we pull the logs. We find that we received his order at let’s say, 9:01:11 and sent the execution back at 9:01:12, so less than a second. He claims it took two minutes and was requoted. Now, his logs showed that the order was placed by him (manually) at 8: 59:50. So, yes, assuming all timestamps are correct, that looks like 2 minutes, but we can clearly see that from the time it was received on our end until the time of execution it was barely only a second, hardly a bad time.
Traders in UK and Europe enjoy significantly lower latencies (hence higher speed execution) and experience almost no re-quotes (when maximum deviation setting is correct) than other traders usually in Asia, Australia, Africa or in countries where the internet is routed via proxies such as Saudi Arabia.
We have no interest or benefit from hedging against our clients. We are an execution-only broker. We only execute instructions received from a properly-logged in terminal.
Our main aim is to provide efficient service and we pride ourselves in customer satisfaction, during and after opening an account. We aim to respond to all emails within 24 hours (Mon-Fri) and encourage our clients to approach us should they at all experience any specific issues.
I do hope that you feel our service has been efficient and would very much like to see you as one of our long term traders.
If you would like to discuss any other concerns, please feel free to contact our team on live-chat, via email or on +44 (0) 207 426 2900 (07:00-22:00 UK Mon-Fri). We’re here to help.
What you encountered is what many others have encountered with Alpari UK too.
View the following video clips of my own encounter with them, and also the attached PDF analytical report showing the majority of their customers witnessing what you and I have witnessed and what they thought Alpari UK really is with their description of Alpari UK, but Alpari UK will continue to deny and tell you a different story. The Writing is Clearly on the Wall after you view the PDF file.
Briefly, this was my encounter with Alpari UK:
Initially I lost more than half of my account, but I did not complain because I didn’t find anything weird - slippage and requotes weren’t that frequent, and platform activities appeared normal too.
However, after I started scalping and made more than 80% of win trades consecutively for several days, and recovering most of my initial losses, all hell broke loose!
All the usual dirty tricks of the Virtual Dealer Plugin(VDP or equivalent) used by bucketshop brokers became apparent also with Alpari UK’s platform. When I complained, they simply denied and kept harping that they are FCA registered, as if being FCA-registered, by default, would warrant them the Angelic broker status.
While they want us to believe that they are a BIG, FCA-registered and Top-notch Broker, what have been witnessed by the majority of their own clients tell a different story. What they really are, The Writing is Very Clearly on the Wall!
For details please view the following video clip proofs of their use of the VDP(or equivalent) and the PDF attachments(my Report and Traders Review Analytical Report with a colored Chart).
Below are the images which show you what Virtual Dealer Plugins(VDP) are about. Anyway, VDP is the software name given by MetaQuotes but brokers can also use their own version of Virtual Dealer to scam their customers. So long you encounter those weird scenarios you described and more… you can be sure that they are counter-trading against you with the VDP or its equivalent software.
The images above are from their early version:3.16
Later versions are much more flexible to allow a more free-hand approach settings by brokers to rip traders with even longer than 5 secs delay etc…
My research on Alpari UK is still ongoing. I have other evidences on hand, and would like to collect more.
Eventually, I plan to petition to the relevant regulators to impose the following requirements as mandatory for all regulated brokers:
Official and Legal Declaration that no VDP(or its equivalent) is used by all non-dealing desk brokers. Random Inspection to be carried out by relevant Authorities.
Software vendors who are engaged by brokers to maintain or design/develop any FX trading platform related project must also declare legally that the project requirement does not include any algorithms to trade against winning traders or to activate any fake price movements.
Employees and outsourced company Directors and employees of brokers involved in system maintenance must also legally declare to FSC(or equivalent) that they would not obey any instructions from their employer to compromise system integrity to deceive traders.
Every licensed broker must legally declare that they will not engage anyone with or without payment to post fake reviews on any FX forums.
Have an attractive reward system for whistle blowers from within the broker’s organization, based on a percentage of the fine imposed on the guilty broker.
I welcome other suggestions.
Any trader buddy who is interested to work together on this is welcome to contact me.
Your issues have already been addressed on ForexPeaceArmy. What you describe as less than customer friendly acts in your post, is nothing more sinister than the physical enactment of the Laws of Supply and Demand. I’m happy to lend a hand however, I can’t add anything to whatever we’ve already told you last year. Furthermore, we have previously stated that we will not be revisiting these for the sake of mere repetition, and our position on that remains unaltered.
Alpari (UK) does not use Virtual Dealer. It is a shame really that BabyPips is being used for speculative purposes. Continued suppositions do not have space on respected forums like this. We do not see how such repetition of hearsay will benefit traders on this forum.
If you dont hedge against your clients how do you protect yourselves? I’m referring to the old “counter-party to your trades is Alpari UK Ltd” thing. For example, in your customer agreement you have the following clause:[I][I]
Classification
4.1. The Company will treat the Customer as a Retail Client, Professional Client or Eligible Counterparty, depending on how the Customer completes the “Application to Open a Personal/Corporate Margin Trading Account” Form.[/I][/I]
you have not addressed the issues the way it is expected by your customer. Outright repeated denial without providing satisfactory logical explanations is far from what’s expected.
Can you explain and illustrate how those scenario occurred as shown in my video clips?
As we have discussed on all the other forums you have raised this on, we’re here to help but I really can’t add anything to what we’ve already said on our multiple emails on this subject last year.
What you described was what I have encountered too as shown in my video clips, but Alpari UK would continue to lie through their teeth and explain away with their no-brainer reasoning, by pushing all the blames to your internet connection and the trading market environment. The encounters I had were all during non-volatile and non-news period, but they still deny outright. They really take us like fools.
My site that stores the video clips and files relating to this issue with them has been recently hacked, but all files can still be download from here: 404 Folder Not Found - Jumpshare
I realize there are so many complaints in Alpari about slippage or stop loss get passed, even though you said it happens everywhere but I don’t see that much complaints in other brokers.
I’m interested in Alpari because we can deposit through Skrill but this issue really scares me.
Who is not scared if your stop loss can get passed 400 pips ( report on Forex Peace Army ) ?
Is there any client there who has his take profit got passed 400 pips ?
I’ve been with Alpari UK, on both the MT4 Micro and Classic accounts for the past few years as I use these accounts for live testing purposes. Admittedly these accounts are not funded with large balances at the time of use, typically I will deposit $1,000 each time I’m testing a new theory.
Have I experienced slippage, yes. I only trade GBP/USD and my worst slippage was close to 2.0 pips, not a big deal really, and they refunded this after I inquired about it via email (which was answered in under 24 hours). However, had I been trading 10 lot pips I wonder if the refund would have been given
The point is this though, slippage & re-quotes do happen, with all brokers. If these two elements scare you enough for concern then price them into your trading approach. Slippage and re-quotes will hurt a scalper a lot more than they will hurt a long time frame trader - the answer, don’t scalp.
As for the post above, I would happily accept a TP to be passed by 400 pips before it gets closed out, a free 400 pips
Is there any client there who has his take profit got passed 400 pips
I mean if there’s a client who got their stop losses passed 400 pips ( like in FPA Review ), then I want to know is there anyone who got their take profit passed 400 pips too, so it will be fair.
What would you say is an acceptable amount of slippage during the non-farm-payrolls? How many pips? when would refunds come into consideration. many thanks.
I do appreciate it was 400 pips - it is usually mayhem in the financial markets following the release of the US jobs report. The US jobs last September report did disappoint a few, with the headline non-farm payrolls figure falling well short of expectations at 148,000. Consequently, the sharp spike in EURUSD shortly after the NFP announcement.
This certainly worked out to be a good day for those traders that were long.
On that note, I understand that this matter was raised with us, thoroughly investigated and resolved to both the clients and our mutual satisfaction. As always, we are happy to investigate any matters that are of genuine concern. Get in touch with us at <[email protected]> . Our dedicated client services team is fluent in our platform as well as 14 languages.
