First time i ever see a post where several had noticed that many systems stopped working leading up to Xmas 2006. I have some theories but how it effects most majors its a mystery. It does tie in with lowest volatility in 10 years and the sudden demise of the dollar.

Then i thought perhaps when volatility increases to normal level Q3 2007 everything will be back to normal but thats not true either so it could very well be filtering but then the market is a strange beast and data in 2008 is so very different to 2004 even a glance of 15 min bars.

To answer some other post Alpari UK have posted in their own forums they allow scalping. Well most of us there think the office junior wrote this and it can't be a serious statement. I'm with them live but i don't use pipsing but if you take 10 pips as scalping then yes i do but getting 10 pips can take anywhere from 5 seconds to 50 hours and its about the smallest you can do on an EA with a fighting chance of making a few bucks.

Finally metaquotes used to have a screenshot of their Broker Control Management system. I dunno if its still about i doubt it due to the noise it caused in forums but it does EVERYTHING. Accounts are classified into size and profit. Each account can undergo completele analysis and dissected for performance as they have to balance the books between successful traders and those that are just losing as the broker handles 90% of the trades internally. All the micro and mini accounts are handled only full lots can go to bank then these are aggregated and offset by other larger trades. Then these big dials called spread and delay etc and other stuff like lift prices and pull down feed and of course there is then the off switch for use just prior to NFP though in last couple of years not many doing this now too many traders getting mad.

anyway this screen does plenty and brokers have the right to ensure they don't lose money on the deal so large traders can always be switched to manual, EA's turned off, delay the feed and increase requotes and the latter is not illegal but just a damaging to the trader. I know cases where certain damaging pipsing EA's are flagged up "sorry this EA can not be used" so the one to one targeting is much higher than you imagine. Basically at any time the broker can not absorb your transaction because its high speed or too large too quickly then the broker has to interact beyond the normal. If you trade very large but spread the load over say 2 or 3 dumps so they can offset it to the bank then everything will be transparent. Likewise your EA trading 1 mini lot for 1 pip 500 times a day is a royal pain in the a$% to the broker as it don't make any money and uses system resources.