Price improvement exists, and its absence says something
Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2026 12:16 pm
Price improvement exists, and its absence says something
Honest execution has price improvement as often as slippage. A buy order might fill a tenth of a pip better than quoted. A stop might trigger and fill slightly better than the stop price because the market gapped in the right direction.
Look at fills over a month and count how many came in better than requested. In healthy conditions, that proportion is meaningful. Some brokers advertise it openly, and a few even report it in their execution statistics.
If positive slippage never happens, the first suspicion is rounding or routing that caps the fill at the quoted price. The cap protects the broker from giving anything away while negative slippage still passes through. It is a design choice and a legal one in most places, which is exactly why traders should look.
The way to find out is simple: compare the price on the order ticket with the fill price in the deal history for every trade. Two columns, subtract, count the signs.
A broker with symmetrical slippage and some price improvement is behaving like a real marketplace. A broker with zero improvement across several hundred fills is behaving like a wall.
What share of fills on the live account came in at a better price than requested?
Honest execution has price improvement as often as slippage. A buy order might fill a tenth of a pip better than quoted. A stop might trigger and fill slightly better than the stop price because the market gapped in the right direction.
Look at fills over a month and count how many came in better than requested. In healthy conditions, that proportion is meaningful. Some brokers advertise it openly, and a few even report it in their execution statistics.
If positive slippage never happens, the first suspicion is rounding or routing that caps the fill at the quoted price. The cap protects the broker from giving anything away while negative slippage still passes through. It is a design choice and a legal one in most places, which is exactly why traders should look.
The way to find out is simple: compare the price on the order ticket with the fill price in the deal history for every trade. Two columns, subtract, count the signs.
A broker with symmetrical slippage and some price improvement is behaving like a real marketplace. A broker with zero improvement across several hundred fills is behaving like a wall.
What share of fills on the live account came in at a better price than requested?