I hope this question is in the right place, I wasn’t sure. Anyway I’ve started trading on a demo account and I’m not sure what happened with a couple of my trades.
This was the first trade, I went short a few candles after the vertical line with my stop-loss at the horizontal line. My trade was stopped out around the last couple candles so I lost that trade despite my stop-loss never being touched. Then it continued bearish so that would’ve been a nice few pips.
At first I thought it may have been slippage, but as I understand it slippage usually happens during high volatility because the price spikes past your stop-loss. In this case the price NEVER reached my stop-loss so it seems strange. The broker is OANDA on MT4 if that makes a difference.
Two usual reasons for stops being unexpectedly hit are wider spreads and breaching margin limit. Perhaps in your case the spread was widened so much that the ask price (not shown on most charts) breached the stop-loss level.
Most charts show only the bid price, the price at which you either go short or close a long position. The ask price is the price at which you buy or close a short position and it is always higher than the bid price. On some chart set-ups you can flip the chart between bid and ask. Or you might need to watch the quoted prices. Getting stopped by a wider spread than normal is very common on very short time-frames.
I believe it was the widened spread, as tommor suggested. At the close of the NY session most brokers widen spreads considerably. This is enough to trigger any close stop losses or pending orders.
