Everyone trades over 30 lots here Jezzode i am surprised you didn’t know that.
Golden, i am surprised, I’m just learning right now and was also wondering if trading 30lots was to much to start with?
I think 30 lots is ok if you are a beginner.
30 lots… Not to be confused with 30 [B]UNITS[/B].
Oanda does that in the java. 30 units would be a $30.00 lot size, so roughly a third of a nano lot. 30 full sized lots in a standard account would be using $3,000,000.00
Jezz, not many people here have traded 30 full size lots.
The most I’ve traded is 10 full sized lots in futures, but not in spot. The fills were immediate. I can’t imagine it being much different in spot. On the depth of market panel in the futures order chart, in the LND/NY joint session, I’ve seen upwards of 600 full 100k lots on the same handle, and they were filled in a matter of seconds.
So 30 lots would likely pose no problem for a decent sized broker.
Cheers!
That’s a festive joke right??
You’re saying that 30 standard lots (equivalent to $300 per pip/$3 million size) is a likely or realistic risk level stake for a typical beginner on here? lol.
I doubt 99.9% of folks on this or any other trading forum will ever be in a financial position to assemble an account able to sustain & trade at 5 standard lots with realistic risk limits, let alone 30.
Demoland is an amazing place innit?
LOL, yes, the 30 lot trade as a newbie is a joke…I am not a newbie, but like to have some fun as much as the next person
And as the question stated, 30 lots as in a $3,000,000 notional trade size on the spot market was my assumption.
Jezzode, I have a friend who has about $200M in net assets, for trading Forex solely. Let me tell you, I’ve asked him the same question, and from what he has stated, unless you are trading with $75-100M, liquidity won’t be an issue at all. Especially for the Fiber and Cable, I would assume.
Also, I’ve had the privilege to place (hit the “enter” button) a trade for a fund for 200 lots ($2000/pip) and still no liquidity problems. You don’t have to worry about 30 lots, it’s still considered “puny”.
Hope that helps.
Regards,
Clark
Certainly appears so yeah.
As is the land of nod. Trouble is, eventually the alarm goes off & spoils the dream.
Ow I know that 100 lot trades in nice liquidity times during LO and NYO would be very little issue.
I’m researching placing higher volume trades at time of less liquidity, at times prior to LO and so also prior to NYO.
I would be interest to know what level of slippage one could obtain at this unfavorable time of the day.
Sure a 20 lot trade is fine in most instances, but at the back of the Asian session I would perhaps think again
Depends on your instrument of choice.
I would think that even in the Asian session, 30 would move mostly at the same handle.
As I said, watching the DoM panel, 30 was usually no problem any time of day.
That seems to be the usual benchmark to go from, most ECN brokers have high volume trades in there FAQ’s
The majority seem to be saying that 30 lots ($3,000,000) is no problem, although trades of a higher volume combined with times of dry liquidity can become problematic. This does not take a genius to work out.
It’s true though that a day trading approach which is highly profitable on lower volumes can rather quickly become less profitable when traded in exactly the same way using much higher volumes.
An interesting area to look into, and yet one area that seems to be a very gray area with no real answer as it’s all down to personal preference 
Perhaps Santa will give me a few spare lots to play with LOL
Has your research taken you to the rep at your broker shop?
You’re best speaking to him/her, giving a rough sweep of your objectives & what you’re looking to achieve.
They’ll give you a good idea as to whether they’ll be able to accommodate your requirements & offer you input on average volume/liquidity blocks around the times you’re seeking to trade, calendar events that affect their specific volume peak/trough numbers etc.
As AltTab noted, a lot will depend on the quality of the shop you’re executing your deals with.
I have talked to a few liquidity providers, and thanks for the pointer, but for now thats been ticked off the list
You would be surprised how many brokers can give you different answers depending on who you are connected to on the phone line LOL
And you would also be surprised how many brokers state that they have liquidity from Tier 1 and Tier 2 commercials banks and yet they still give you various answers.
All this broker ‘small talk’ is simply that, statements that need to read into in allot more detail
Dukascopy insists all traders (retail, hedge fund, bank) can get one-click fills on $200,000,000 positions. At that level trades are being routed out to the likes of JP Morgan, Barclays, Nomura, etc. for best-price quotes.
Most market makers have a max lot size as they practice guaranteed all-or-nothing fills. Such non-ECNs have to requote you all day or slip you hard if you trade outside their hedging or match-orders-to-other-traders-orders limits.
An ECN will route to market to get you filled outside the internal network no matter the price if they are doing the proper MT4 server side workarounds to prevent requotes and support partial fills.
Access to true liquidity pools mean accepting partial-fills unfortunately.
Recently I’ve seen a $10,000,000 position filled at a hedge fund on AUD/USD at around 13:15 GMT, it was processed as follows:
Platform: Integral / FIX API
Trade: AUDUSD $10,000,000 100 Lot Short
Type: At-Market
Execution: Instant (less than one sec)
Fill sets: 4 - Full (not partial)
$4,000,000 1.02246
$3,000,000 1.02245
$2,000,000 1.02242
$1,000,000 1.02241
You have the option on some platforms to fill-or-kill if you want to prevent partial fills, best price execution routing algos brokers use can and will split the order to get the best price - the above example is practically zero slippage nonetheless. If the orders were set-biased perhaps the router would have slipped the price just to match another order in the book at $10m in one set at one price. The main factor is max-slippage setting on at-market orders in fast moving markets. If the first 2 sets filled and markets moved 2 pips south, 1 pip max slippage criteria would cause a partial fill of the order at $7,000,000 in 2 sets at 2 price points leaving the trader to decide what to do about it. Fill-or-kill in this scenario would result in no trade at all.
The fund have previously been able to place a eurusd trade at $50,000,000 filled in one set instantly though with 1.3 pip slip.
Under MT4 partial fills are a nightmare due to rotating ticket numbers and a common source of EA problems and losses running against ECN brokers. I know an EA that lost 12% of an account due to a partial close. The strategy used no stops but active monitoring to close trades. The part that never got closed couldnt be controlled by the EA anymore after the partial close until the trader manually killed it - because of rotating tickets.
The rotating ticket issue for those that don’t know is a MT4 quirk that means you open a trade that gets given Ticket 1 - say 4 lots.
You go to close that trade using the ticket number. But it gets partially closed (say 2 lots go) and you now have 2 lots still open on that trade. Same trade. But the bastard ticket number isn’t 1 anymore it’s something else that’s not even determinable. You have to search the order list for it (criteria: symbol, original lots - closed lot, time opened, etc). It can be better to use magic numbers.
The bigger ***** though is partial opens which can spit out two tickets/orders (if fills come through within certain total amount of time and within slippage limits). So say 4 lot order gets Ticket 14 eurusd 3 lot buy, Ticket 15 eurusd 1 lot buy.
Watch those EAs on ECN brokers under MT4 - many developers have no idea this kind of problem is lurking if they don’t run proper tests.
What do I mean by proper tests? I mean live tests. The only platform I’ve seen partial fill on demo is Dukascopys - no doubt others may support this behaviour also. If an EA developer doesn’t know how to code around it already, they need to experience it in tests to program the fix for it otherwise the EA loses control of open positions until stop loss if no KillAllOpenPositions logic is used and none is the wiser
Hmmm… you may have more direct experinece with this than I do Clark…most i’ve ever traded in lots is upwards of about 10-20…and it was just a foolishly overleveraged position for me. (considering appropriate risk for my account tends to sit between 1 - 4 “standard” lots per order).
However, I DID notice a few pips slippage on those orders…but that was in the futures markets. Say, an average slippage of 2 pips.
I know from what I’ve read that the futures markets makes up about 9% of the total forex market. So… we could exrapolate and say we could multiply this by 11 times… and get a good number.
So, if 4 lots (a LARGE position for me, but one that still fits under 2% of my account risk per trade in some cases) is a position I’m able to enter without any slippage 90% of the time… I can possibly safely assume that 44 lots would be the equivilent in the spot market.
I tend to estimate down in cases like these, to prep for the worst. So…say… 30-40 should by able to be filled about anytime during the london session in eur/usd. and in gbp/usd…maybe 1/2- 2/3 of that, with comperable "slippage (or a lack thereof)
If we go on my 10-20 contract position…with an average slippage of 2 pips… one could speculate that 100 lots could be filled in the spot market with an averge slippage of 2 pips…though I am a bit skeptical of this.
I am not doubting that Clark…you got filled on your order for 200 lots without any problem…but, at what average fill price…and what were the market conditions (buying in a dropping market makes this EASY… buying in a market as it just breaks out changes this entirely!)
Filling is a given in all but the most extreme cases. But filling with ZERO slippage…this is a different matter altogether.
Jay
Thanks MM,
That’s the kind of answer I was looking for, a high volume trade of 100 lots with details of the execution. One rather simple way around partial fills that brokers have advised me on is to break the order down into say 10 lot batches, and click ‘BUY’ or ‘SELL’ multiple times until you have your full desired order of say 50 lots. (obviously this would require you to rapid click BUY/SELL 5 times) As for the effectiveness of this approach, like many traders, until you have ‘tried’ it for yourself, you are non the wiser.
It’s interesting you talk about Dukascopy, as this is one Broker that was at the top of my list for ECN accounts when the bank roll ‘grows’ to a substantial level. I’m also glad you have mentioned that you have experienced partial fills on the demo Dukascopy platform. I also happened to experience slippage of small orders on the demo platform and if im honest it actually put me off opening a real cash account with them. I mean its great that they are being honest, even at the demo stages, but wow, slippage on a 5 lot trade of over 2 pips in normal market conditions killed the dream for me opening an account with Dukascopy for now. But they may be looked at in the future when Liquidity becomes a problem and when i need more of it. At the end of the day, Dukascopy do have extremely high liquidity feeds, and this may become the determining factor in the long run.
As for MT4, I wont be using it for trading as of next year, I’ll be simply using it for some analysis here and there as im used to how the platform works. I was amused with your experience of ‘Rotating Ticket Numbers’, this would frustrate me to a level I could not even start to explain LOL.
I do personally think that when you are trading higher volumes, or even trading lower volumes but on a higher frequency set-up that direct dealing is most efficient, rather than going through any bridging software with MT4 or Ninja Trader.
I have a sneaky feeling that by the end of next year, no matter how much I keep telling myself not to, that I WILL have an account with Dukascopy!!! And actually I really hope it works out for the best, as all I have heard is positive feedback from real time traders both on the high end retail side and the low end commercial side. At the end of the day they cant be that bad, but my demo trade that was slipped did put me off for now!
I am not doubting that Clark…you got filled on your order for 200 lots without any problem…but, at what average fill price…and what were the market conditions (buying in a dropping market makes this EASY… buying in a market as it just breaks out changes this entirely!)
Filling is a given in all but the most extreme cases. But filling with ZERO slippage…this is a different matter altogether.
Jay
I think this is the crucial part here, what was the average price. Sure selling or buying even a 500 lot trade that I knew I was holding for the long term would not bother me in terms of any filling slippages. But day trading 100 lot positions where a 3 pip slippage against you is catastrophic…that would be my major concern.
I know for a fact that my own personal trading approach is spit over several trading sessions, but with 30% of my trades taken place outside of the London and New York session, Liquidity can hit you in the face hard. Thankfully, I have a trading approach that also looks to enter upon price ‘stalling’, which should in hindsight reduce the total slippage gained. What i should be looking for is signals to buy into a falling market just prior to price turning, and the opposite for selling. This would be the optimum entry, with minimal slippage. But **** me…its not easy LOL
Yesterday I broke through. Attained 50 pips with sgtmarkets .com/en/trading-platforms/fix-api-trading/