Stop hunting or thin liquidity? A way to check your own stop fills

[FXS London Scalper]

Many traders suspect their broker of hunting stops. It's possible to check with your own data instead of guessing.

Method, over a few months:

• Log every stop loss: time, stop level, fill price, slippage.
• Check whether price on another feed, for example a second broker or a futures chart, reached the same level.
• Note if the stop sat at a level many traders would pick, like a round number or a recent high or low.
• Note the time: open, news, rollover or quiet.

How to read it:

• If stops trigger where other feeds also traded, it's the market.
• If they cluster at rollover or opens with wide spreads, it's liquidity and spread, which is real but not targeting.
• If stops trigger on your broker's feed only, repeatedly, at quiet times, that's worth raising with the broker, with examples.

A common finding is that stops at obvious levels get hit more often simply because many traders use them.

Has anyone done this comparison?