A weekly spread histogram anyone can build
Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2026 2:57 pm
A quick weekly check that catches execution changes before they show up in results: export last week's tick data for EURUSD and GBPUSD and draw a spread histogram by hour. With a short Python script it takes about ten minutes.
What to look at:
The script is nothing special: load ticks, compute ask minus bid, group by hour, print percentiles (50th, 90th, 99th). Most platforms can export ticks, so anyone can build it. MT5 lets you export ticks from the Ticks tab of the Symbols dialog.
Do others monitor spreads like this, or rely on the broker's published averages?
What to look at:
- Median spread for 08:00 to 11:00 London time. On a raw account EURUSD is typically somewhere around 0.1 to 0.2 pips. Note your own figure as a baseline.
- The share of ticks with spread above 1 pip in that window. In normal conditions it should be small. If it jumps to several percent, something changed: a new liquidity provider, a server change, or just a very quiet market.
- Spread at the 22:00 rollover hour, as a reminder of why that hour is best left alone.
The script is nothing special: load ticks, compute ask minus bid, group by hour, print percentiles (50th, 90th, 99th). Most platforms can export ticks, so anyone can build it. MT5 lets you export ticks from the Ticks tab of the Symbols dialog.
Do others monitor spreads like this, or rely on the broker's published averages?