Hope everyone is doing well. So i took a sell trade last week, and it was going really well. I even managed to move my stop loss to a 5% profit level. However, when I checked the trade in the morning, i noticed my trade was closed during the night for just a 2% profit, even though price didn’t come anywhere near my entry price or stop loss.
After speaking to the broker, it seems that slippage caused my trade to close above my 5% stop loss level. As you can see from the screenshot, I entered the trade at the begginng of the dotted red line on the left, the black line is where I moved my stop loss to. The end of the dotted red line is where I was stopped out, even though the the stop loss was way lower. This happened during the market open/close around Wednesday during the week.
A trade that was in around 7% profit suddenly closing past my stop for way less profit did hurt a bit lol. What i wanted to know is that is this normal ? I have always taken slippage into consideration, but this seemed to be by a huge amount. Is there any way around this ? How can I deal with this ? As I trade a trend following strategy on the 15m chart, some of my trades are held for around 2/3 days overnight, so closing the trades before market open/close isn’t possible. How do you guys deal with this ?
“Slippage” my ass. Was this about the same time markets opened? Brokers widen spreads at NY close each day as well as when markets open at the beginning of the week for about 1 hour.
Depending on the pair it can be significant. I think you were another victim of this. Make sure your SL’s and any orders are well away from price during these times.
At NY close today you should note the spreads so you know how far away you need to be.
it is not actually a slippage issue. It’s the overnight spread that usually get to 20 to 50 pips depending on the broker. So if your SL is somewhere below that range it will be hit for sure. If you want to know your SL when the market is closed, know the maximum spread of the pair that you are trading. There is a free tool that you can download in codebase in MQL5 site. The name is " SpreadWatch". Run it for 1 week at least to get the max range that you can avoid.
Don;t forget to give it a 5-star rate for the author who gave us a free, simple to use, but very useful tool.
Yes, I agree with @TotoCayetano, the issue was probably a wide spread. The spread I currently see on this pair is 3-4 pips, but spreads are known to go out to 10 or more times “normal” when trade is thin every single day. You should recognise that the chart probably shows the bid price, and the only way to know the ask price (at which your short trade would be closed) is to see the broker’s quotes.
However, you say you entered this as a short position last week, yet your diagram shows the 5-minute chart and I believe its from from earlier today. Looks to me like you got in about breakfast time and got stopped out around lunch-time. you would have been stopped out by now anyway now that price has gone above your entry.
Showing a 5-minute chart makes the price action clear for the purposes of this thread but its no basis for a multi-day position. What’s going on?
