A requote might be the most honest thing a broker does

[Fairman]

A requote might be the most honest thing a broker does

Everyone hates requotes. They feel like an insult in the middle of a fast move. But compare that to a broker that fills at whatever price is available and calls it market execution.

A requote at least shows the price changed. A silent slip of half a pip shows nothing, and the trade is already open before it is noticed. Plenty of traders switch to market execution to dodge requotes and then complain about slippage, which is the same event wearing a different coat.

The real question is symmetry. Does the price change both ways, for and against, in roughly equal measure? If positive slippage never appears over a few hundred fills, that is not market structure. That is policy.

A decent test: log the requested price and the filled price for every trade for two weeks. Plot the difference. A healthy distribution looks like a bell curve centred near zero. A broker leaning on the client produces a lopsided hill with a long tail on the wrong side.

Requotes are annoying. Lopsided slippage is expensive. The two get confused constantly.

How many fills would be enough to call a slippage distribution lopsided rather than just unlucky?