Bad ticks, and why a spike is not always a real price

[Shadow Trader]

Anyone who has watched a chart for long enough has seen it. A candle shoots 30 pips in one direction and snaps back, with a wick like a needle. Sometimes it's a real move in thin liquidity. Sometimes it's a bad tick, a glitch in the data feed that produced a price that never traded.

The difference matters. If the stop triggered on a bad tick, the broker may or may not cancel the trade, depending on its policies. Some brokers have clear rules about erroneous quotes and reverse the fills. Others hold firm because the price appeared on their feed.

For backtesting, bad ticks are a nightmare. A single phantom spike can trigger fifty fake stop outs in a test, ruining the results. Cleaning tick data before testing is a necessary step, not an optional one.

How to handle it live: screenshot the spike immediately, note the time, and contact support with specifics. Documentation matters, and a quick response helps a lot.

Has a bad tick ever hit a stop? Did the broker reverse it, or was the loss kept?