Hey guys,
I am new to this forum and relatively new to forex trading. To be exact I am Demo-trading for 4 months now but also have opened a Live-Account. I started trading with ZuluTrade and AAAFX. It’s a ECN/NDD Broker with really very tight spreads and fast execution during normal market conditions. BUT…I monitored their spreads and at 14.30 London Time, when the U.S. Nom-Farm Payroll numbers were released spreads went from around 2.0 pips to around 26 pips with GBP/CAD!!! That is really … crazy! Approximately 20 seconds later spreads were at 2.0 again. At 16.00 London time, the Canadian PMI was released and the spread balooned again to 11.7 pips but fortunately not so heavily as previously with the Non-Farm-Payroll Numbers Release.
Question 1: For news traders - is a broker with fixed spreads the better choice or will spreads also go up at important news releases there? At hot forex for example they say that the spreads are only fixed for 99,73% of the time excluding big news time releases.
As well I am wondering what will happen with execution speed in live-accounts. In my Demo Account I followed a signal provider for fun. He was also trading the news. And my first trade was opened 17 seconds (!) later than his trade.
Question 2: Many other brokers advertise with “Nano-second execution” or “No slippage guaranteed”. Is this also only the case for normal market conditions or will this also count for times when big news are released?
Question 3: How can I control or even avoid slippage at best during news releases?
Question 4: Does execution speed also vary depending on how many lots I trade?
Many thanks for your thoughts and answers.