Every so often, the price on the platform stops updating for a few seconds. No error, no disconnect symbol. The quote just sits there. Then it jumps to the real market.
Several causes exist. A connection hiccup between the platform and the server. The broker's pricing engine being overloaded. A pause in the feed from liquidity providers during a busy moment.
During a stale period, the displayed price isn't the market price. Orders sent in that window can be rejected, or filled at the new price when the feed resumes. The gap between the stale quote and the resumed quote is a free move for whoever gets filled on the right side, and a cost for the other.
Some brokers have rules that cancel trades made at stale prices, a practice that tends to favor the broker. Their terms mention "off-market prices" or "latency arbitrage" in the fine print.
A way to monitor it is to watch for stretches where the tick count per minute drops to near zero and then bursts. Plotting that over a week shows how frequent the freezes are.
Has anyone experienced a trade being cancelled or adjusted after the fact because of an off-market price?
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Stale quotes and the broker that goes quiet
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Shadow Trader
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Amanhasnoname
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Re: Stale quotes and the broker that goes quiet
Yes, once, and it soured me on that broker for good. I had a market order filled on USDCAD during a busy morning around the Canadian data, and it went nicely in my favour within seconds. About an hour later the trade had vanished from my history and a note in the platform mailbox said it had been cancelled for being executed at an off-market price.
When I asked for details, the reply pointed to a clause about price feed errors in the terms. What annoyed me was that I had been filled at bad prices plenty of times on that account and none of those were ever corrected in my favour. The adjustments only ever ran one way.
Since then I watch for exactly what you mention, the tick count suddenly dropping to almost nothing and then bursting. I keep a small tick counter in the corner of my chart, and when it reads zero for more than a couple of seconds during active hours I don't click anything until it starts moving again. I also read the off-market price section of the terms before funding any new account.
When I asked for details, the reply pointed to a clause about price feed errors in the terms. What annoyed me was that I had been filled at bad prices plenty of times on that account and none of those were ever corrected in my favour. The adjustments only ever ran one way.
Since then I watch for exactly what you mention, the tick count suddenly dropping to almost nothing and then bursting. I keep a small tick counter in the corner of my chart, and when it reads zero for more than a couple of seconds during active hours I don't click anything until it starts moving again. I also read the off-market price section of the terms before funding any new account.