Requotes then, slippage now: how execution costs changed shape

[FXS London Scalper]

Older traders remember market maker accounts where requotes in the first minutes after 08:00 were routine. Today most retail accounts use market execution with slippage instead. The cost hasn't disappeared; it has changed shape.

The old model:

• Your order came back with a new price, usually worse, and you accepted or rejected it.
• You saw the cost every time, which was annoying but transparent.
• Requotes in your favour were rare.

The current model:

• No requotes, because the order fills at the available price.
• Slippage shows up only in the fill, and can be positive or negative.
• Fill times are typically tens of milliseconds rather than hundreds.

The risk now is that slippage is quiet. Unless you log requested price against fill price, you won't notice it. A worked example: if a third of your open-time orders slip by an average of 0.2 pips, that's about 0.07 pips per order across all of them. Relative to a 5 pip target it's minor, but on 400 trades it is 28 pips.

To compare the two models on your own account, export the deal history, compute fill minus requested price, and group by the minute after 08:00.

Does anyone still use an account that requotes? Some traders prefer seeing the price before accepting it.