I am closing my FXCM account after multiple transactions that do not look legit.
Sunday, a candle opened beyond my take profit range and the take profit did not trigger, the candle moved opposite the direction towards entry and the order was left open. Closed it out after seeing that.
Yesterday, moved my stop loss to a little higher than break even and was going to let the trade run. The pair was stopped out 38 pips BELOW my stop loss.
Yesterday, had a trade enter and exit within a split second. My entry level was 0.87687, yet the high candle on multiple platforms shows only .87549, which is a difference of 14 pips.
I am OK with a loss if I make a bad call in the direction a pair is moving… I’m NOT OK with orders not executing even close to their entry/exit/take profits.
Looking for a good US Broker, any recommendations?
You might want to check a few things before making statements like this. Obviously, I cant see your charts but these may be possible reasons.
On Sunday candles often open with a large gap. Most brokers are closed for the weekend and liquidity is very low, so it can be difficult to open or close a position.
Are you sure it was 38 pips and not 38 points/pipettes (3.8 pips). If so, most of this would have been absorbed in the spread. What pair was the trade and what time, spreads widen at different times
Again, what pair and when?
Have you asked your broker to explain what happened? Might be a fair place to start
All the points Eddie makes above are entirely fair and valid and correct, of course.
However …
Industry regulators, in the past, have “checked things out” very carefully before deciding to fine FXCM millions of dollars [I]over matters directly related to the ways they’ve treated their customers[/I], and I must admit that whenever I see forum title-lines associating FXCM with the word “scam”, my instinctive sympathies therefore tend to be with the poster rather than with FXCM … coupled with a feeling that people who do appropriate due diligence [B]before[/B] opening their trading accounts shouldn’t be using this broker in the first place.
Personal opinion only of course (apart from the previous adverse regulatory rulings and fines, which are both objective and factual.)
I checked these things before making this statement.
Ok, I can take that although if I place an order on Sunday it goes through fine instantly. But lets say that the liquidity is the issue. I can accept that.
Bought at 2.31286, was up 38 pips (sorry before said it was closed out at 38 pips but I was profitable 38 pips when I set the stop loss to break even.) Order was closed out at 2.30713. That is 57.3 pips lower than my break even correct? That is huge and I have wrote them about it and they are chalking it up to news. I can understand a couple of pips but that is significant.
The broker claims that the order was triggered because the order was hit, but every platform that I am showing is not showing a candle reaching my entry… so unless the spread reached 14 pips (and the candle doesnt reflect that) then something is clearly wrong here.
Can you give exact specifics on the direction of trade, on the times, and on the levels these orders were executed? Do not forget to include the pair you were trading.
I have seen FXCM spreads widen from just .6 to 20+ and back to below 1 in seconds. I have no doubt at all that you might have seen the same sort of thing. But I want to see how it looks in the data feed as I have never seen anything that did not actually show up in the data.
This phenomenon is yet another reason longer term trading is much less expensive than shorter term.
I’ll get specifics tonight when I am at home, regardless shouldn’t a candle reflect a price has reached regardless of bid ask spread? i.e. if an order executed at 1.00000 then the candle shouldn’t show a high of .99500 should it? Shouldn’t the candle show a high of 1.00000 if that was indeed the high that an order was executed at?
A common misunderstanding here is that a trader looking at a bid chart sees a candle that stops short of his buy entry or his short exit. Conversely, a trader looking at an ask chart sees a candle that stops short of his short entry or his long exit. This is particularly troublesome for MT4 traders that can only see a bid chart with a live ask line.
What can happen is the spread can widen dramatically but you can only see that by comparing bid and ask data. [B]Heads up[/B]: Often, the close of the trading session is vulnerable to a sudden flash of wide spreads due to a number of factors that include trades set to get in just before close and others set to get in just after open. Thus, following a pair with a 5 pip stop going into the session close is just asking for slippage.
The answer depends on whether you are looking at a bid or ask chart. If an order to buy at 1.0000 is executed, then the ask data should show a candle that hits 1.0000 or higher. But if we suppose the ask only hit 1.0000 while the bid hit just 0.9950, the bid chart would show the candle missing the entry by 50 pips. But what actually happened is the spread widened to 50 pips and the ask triggered the entry which was filled at the ask.
This is particularly troubling to traders with targets and stop losses that are smaller than the daily range. EUR/USD can easily range 200 pips in a single session. While spreads will largely be maintained at a pip or two or perhaps even smaller, there can be sudden bursts of orders that can eat up liquidity and widen spreads to ten or twenty pips pretty easily. This may last just seconds. But when it does it can kill all the traders with 10 pip stops and targets. When you look at daily or even hourly data, these blips are not really visible. But minute charts can show you what really happened.
This is why scalping is so expensive. You have to account for a number of times wherein profits from many trades can be instantly wiped out.
To the OP. Unfortunately we have heard this all before. If there is a genuine issue here then you have to provide full disclosure of the facts. Dates, times, charts, position etc. Otherwise well, welcome to the club. We’ve all been taken out by news events or weekend gaps. Par for the course. Those whom choose to blame their broker usually walk away from forex. Those that accept the fact we choose to have open trades at these times chalk it up to experience and live to fight another day.
Best of luck on your journey bro. I suggest you read prospective brokers PDS first and gain a deeper understandingvon how price is set.
Wow I have accounts at Hotforex and FXCM both are doing well for me, not sure if you can try Hotforex since they have some restrictions for US and Canada residents…
I just noticed this discussion thread. As FXCM’s representative on BabyPips, I would be happy to address any concerns you have about your account with us. It would be a shame for you to close your trading account over a misunderstanding. As Adrian has said, you have to take into account the bid-ask spread.
Note that while most charting platforms will only show you the Bid price, the Marketscope charts on our Trading Station platform will let you view the Ask price as well. Simply click on the Ask button in your chart toolbar to confirm whether your Stop order was triggered correctly by the Ask price as the time in question, and please let us know your findings.
If you still believe there to be an error after viewing the Ask price chart, please us this form to file a trade inquiry.
It’s important to understand that as an industry leader, FXCM is subject to a greater level of scrutiny than smaller, less-regulated forex brokers. We are one of the only retail forex brokers in the world that’s regulated on four continents and a publicly-traded company (NYSE ticker: FXCM) averaging $15.2 billion per day* in retail customer trading volume. We welcome this position of responsibility, and our retail clients who place 513,724 trades through us per day* are glad we do.
FXCM takes regulations very seriously and believe it is in our clients’ best interests for us to have regulatory oversight and transparency. That’s why we have over 80 employees in our compliance department as mentioned by our CEO Drew Niv in a recent earnings call. That’s not to excuse previous regulatory actions, but rather to emphasize how we actively work with our regulators to resolve issues and ensure the best trading environment possible for our clients.
For example, the NFA and FCA actions for positive slippage not being passed on prior to 2010 have been mentioned previously on this forum. FXCM reimbursed current and former clients who were affected in full. Furthermore, the changes we made in 2010 mean that FXCM is now one of the only firms in the industry to pass on positive slippage on all order types including market and limit orders.
It’s worth noting that to this day, some brokers may still not provide positive slippage to their clients, while others may provide positive slippage on some order types, but don’t provide it on other order types. Some brokers may re-quote their clients when the price moves in their clients’ favor but fail to re-quote when the price moves against them. There are no re-quotes at FXCM.
Furthermore, FXCM offers true limit orders on all the platforms we offer including MT4. That means our clients cannot receive negative slippage on their limit orders, only positive slippage. By contrast, some brokers treat limit orders on MT4 like market orders when triggered opening up the possibility of negative slippage.
When FXCM was founded in 1999, we were one of the pioneers in what is still a relatively young and quickly evolving industry that is retail forex. The key to our continued growth and success while others have come and gone is due in no small part to our ability to adapt to and lead change in this market. The stats below demonstrate this.
Below are the data from over 43 million orders executed through FXCM over a twelve month period from September 2013 through August 2014. In that year alone, FXCM clients benefited from over $21 million in positive slippage.
[ul]
[li]76.2% of all orders had no slippage.
[/li][li]13.5% of all orders received positive slippage.
[/li][li]10.2% of all orders received negative slippage.
[/li][li]Over 58% of all limit and limit entry orders received positive slippage.
[/li][li]52% of all stop and stop entry orders received negative slippage.
[/li][/ul]
Note how FXCM clients receive positive slippage more frequently than negative slippage. That’s due in part to the Market Range and Range Entry order types on our Trading Station platform that allow clients to specify the amount of negative slippage they are willing to accept on market and pending orders respectively. These unique order types allow FXCM clients to limit their negative slippage while still receiving the full benefits of any positive slippage that’s available in the market.
[I]* As of the latest publicly available data from October 2015[/I]
I have no wish to prolong the discussion, and am slightly surprised that you apparently do.
Your being subject to a greater level of scrutiny than smaller, less-regulated forex brokers, which I accept, doesn’t change the [B]fact[/B] that your company has been fined millions of dollars by those very regulators you like mentioning [U]over issues directly related to the ways you’ve treated your clients[/U] in the past.
There isn’t anything you can say here that can change that: it’s [I]factual[/I].
I’m not having a go at you personally, Jason, but I prefer to trade with brokers who [B]haven’t[/B] been fined millions of dollars by regulators over issues directly related to the ways they’ve treated their clients.
That’s my perspective, and it’s a perfectly reasonable one, and I’m entitled both to hold and to express it.
Thank you Lexy’s for the insight.
Have been drawing some insights also. Gracious.
Tim
Why must us little people even have to ponder this may be occurring…WHY??? WHERE is the dignity in today’s world???
in the long run (and this might appear out of topic) but this generation, or in this century, its safe to safe, its not dignity that drives people any more, its capitalism, and its all about money, the good days were when people did things coz they chased perfection, now they do things chasing the highest value with less work done, the same thing can be said in the forex brokers industry, and we traders just have to make the best of it and deal with it.
This recent instance, though, is really “small fry” and pretty inconsequential compared with some of what’s gone on in the past. But one could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that it may still speak of a company that simply doesn’t learn from its mistakes.
