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Regulated brokers must publish an order execution policy. It's a dry document, often a PDF. For a scalper it's among the most informative things available.

Several questions can be answered from it. Does the broker act as principal or agent? Is client flow hedged externally, or kept internally? Which liquidity providers are used? How is slippage treated, symmetrical or not? Are there rules on last look, on rejecting orders, on order size limits?

Key phrases deserve attention. "Best execution" has a specific regulatory meaning but is interpreted flexibly. "Price improvement" says whether positive slippage is passed on. "Discretion" and "reserve the right" mark areas where the broker keeps freedom to act.

Another item is the trading hours for each symbol, including daily breaks. The policy lists them, and they often differ from what users assume.

Comparing the policy with observed behavior is a useful exercise. If the document says slippage is symmetric and the fill ledger shows otherwise, that's a documented discrepancy worth raising with support.

Few traders read the policy, which is why brokers can be vague without consequence.

What has been learned from an execution policy that changed how an account was used?

Reading the execution policy properly is what made me leave a broker I had been with for two years. I opened it because my fills during the London open felt worse than they should have been, and I wanted to know what I had agreed to before complaining.

Buried in a paragraph about market conditions was a line saying the firm may apply a price tolerance and only pass on positive slippage at its discretion. In plain terms, slippage against me was always applied and slippage in my favour was optional. I checked six weeks of my own fills and the pattern matched that wording almost exactly, with lots of small negative slippage and very little positive.

I raised it with support and got a polite non-answer, so I moved the account. Now the first thing I do with any new broker is search the policy for the words discretion, tolerance and last look, and I read the trading hours table too, because the daily break was different from what I assumed.