I have no problem with hedge funds trying to manipulate things.
It's just their way of trading. Being big has advantages. Being small also.
But try to every pip they can.

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TraderSeven,
May the pips be with you.

I've wondered about the EA thing - Its hard to say that they will "corrupt" the price base based on EA's. There are so many EAs, and they all have different strategies, etc. The only way to ensure that no one wins is to ensure no movement. That, and we do benefit from the fact that there are fundamental forces working that necessitate that the broker keep the OVERALL price feed consistent with reality.

As such, the biggest issue is stop loss running, in my opinion. Price shadowing, changing spreads, etc are most likely a given at any retail dealer/broker. Its just how they make money, and that won't change. I'm trying to take that into account with my system. For instance, if I'm going for a 10 pip TP, I wouldn't select a pair that spikes to a 5 pip spread. To me, it means I need to be an extra 50% right.

But stoploss running just pisses me off. Its a deliberate speedbump that they throw out to screw you up and take your money. I've been trying to come up with a good way to protect myself, but make it "unattractive" to run my stop.

My "best" idea so far is to use multiple timeframe charts to set a relatively large stoploss for the TF that I'm trading on, but still one that makes sense on the longer TF. Then, when a position is in profit by some average bar size on my trading TF, change the SL to BE+3 or +5 depending upon the pair and my appetite for risk. I'm finessing it now, and we'll see. It seems to work OK with well developed systems that have a good % chance of being somewhat right (asctrend, XO, etc...). Oh yeah, and I'm trying to do this with a hidden SL...

Thoughts?

Wouldn't it just be easier to have an ethical dealer? hahaha... Yeah, right...

-CS

Dr.Goodvibe
Excellent point made.


They are here to do business and they are not going down under so that they can accomodate your orders. And if it means that you need to widen spreads at news time, so be it. I dont think any broker in their right minds would guarantee anything to anyone.
Other than that brokers are known to trade against clients when they see stops lined up close to the present price. And a lot more stuff.
2 things to do:
Stop trading news or
Get another broker.

The problem is not that important, but the solutions is. Unfortunately we cant call the shots.

Anyway, if you were a broker, would you keep the spreads same when there is a NFP news?? Would you guarantee fill-ins and would you guarantee stops??

What you need is the least of all evils!

Just thought I'd add a comment in here - in my day job I deal with the top investment banks (Barclays Capital, Citigroup, JP Morgan etc) in government bond trading (software app, no trading help unfortunately!). On NFP, they sometimes suffer from servers freezing under high load, etc so it's no wonder brokers have price feed problems. Given the huge volumes, no-one should realistically expect to get in immediately after the news, you simply cannot compete on your internet connection with the big banks and their leased line connections and loads of servers, applications and people behind them. It's far more realistic to take a position on the news some time in advance based on economic and fundamental analysis rather than last-minute analysis.

Btw, those who think the brokers/banks stop-hunt just their stops amuse me - one of the first things I read on FX was not to place stops in obvious places...

-TPO.

"Maximum number of trades, Some trader's like myself like to made as many as 100 trades at a time to make a profit. Now I see that interBankFX is going to limit the number of trades you are allow to make in a period of time futher limiting the ability of a trader to make a profit."

Since I was curious about what you were trying to say, I skimmed the PDF document. Near the end it says that you are limited to 100 lots per price quote.

What's that, $1000 a pip? And that's going to cramp your style?

I'd say that it's maybe time to move on. You've outgrown IBFX. Ain't no big deal. Good luck!