IC Markets vs Exness vs Pepperstone: execution notes from live logs

[LondonScalper]

Head-to-head notes from live logs, same weeks, same hours. Not a billboard ranking.

The IC Markets, Exness and Pepperstone raw accounts I tested showed different personalities at 08:05 versus 13:35. One looked tighter in quiet mid-morning; another rejected fewer stops in my sample; a third had cleaner withdrawals. None won every column. I keep the comparison sheet dated so stale months do not decide current size.

Method, so people can judge it: same EURUSD setup, minimum size, roughly sixty trades per account over six weeks, all inside London hours. I logged spread at entry, fill versus requested price, and any rejects. Sixty trades is small, so I treat differences of less than 0.1 pip as noise.

The biggest difference was not spread at all. It was behaviour in the first minute after data, where one account widened much more than the others. If you never trade near news, that may not matter to you at all.

Execution notes expire. I rerun a short sample after any account change. Brand loyalty is how people ignore their own deals tab.

[Shadow Trader]

Treating under 0.1 pip as noise is sensible, and rough maths backs it up. If slip per trade varies by around 0.3 pips, sixty trades put the error on the average near 0.04, so 0.1 is only a couple of those from zero.

That makes the first minute after data the result I'd trust most from your sample. An account that widens several times more than the others shows up clearly even in a small count.

For that column I log the widest spread in the 60 seconds after the release, not the spread at my entry. I rarely enter right after data, so the peak tells me more about what my stops sat through.

I'd also be curious how you counted rejects. On market execution accounts I've rarely seen an outright reject, but I have seen orders sit for a second or more in the journal before filling, which is the same problem under a different label.

Dating the sheet is the habit more people should copy. My own comparison flipped once in a year after one account moved servers, and I'd have missed it without a rerun.

Did you keep minimum size for the stop tests too? I've wondered whether fills on larger tickets would rank the three differently.

[Shadow Trader]

LondonScalper, I ran the peak spread column on the same three names over a quieter six week patch. Widest ask minus bid in the sixty seconds after 13:30 US data came out near 2.8 pips on one account, 1.9 on another, and 4.1 on the third.

Quiet mid-morning medians for those same accounts sat between 0.2 and 0.4, so the ranking at 08:05 said almost nothing about the data minute.

img_13359_r2.png (47.73 KiB) Viewed 4 times

The chart above is an illustration of that split. If your stops live through releases, the peak column is the one I would size from, not the calm median.

On rejects I counted anything that sat in the journal more than 800 ms before a fill as a soft reject. That reordered one of the three versus counting only hard rejects, which were almost zero on market execution.

Minimum size for stops was what I used too. A later spot check at three times size did not change the calm ranking, but the wide account's peak after data jumped another pip, which is enough to matter on a stop.

Would you publish the peak column next to the calm one on the dated sheet, or keep news minutes fully parked?