Stop orders turn into market orders, and gaps do not care about your price
Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2026 7:07 am
A stop at 1.0850 is a trigger, not a promise. When price touches the level, the order becomes a market order and fills at the next available price, which during fast moves can sit several pips away.
Scalpers feel this most around the minute a number is released or when liquidity thins in the late New York hours. A stop that was meant to risk 4 pips can easily cost 9 or 12, which turns a 1.5 to 1 setup into something much uglier.
Stop-limit orders sound like a fix, but they swap the slippage problem for a no-fill problem. Price blows through the limit, the position stays open, and the loss keeps growing while the trader watches.
The honest approach is to size the trade for the worst realistic fill, not the ideal one. If a 4 pip stop can become 10 on a bad day, the position needs to be small enough that 10 pips still hurts only a little.
How wide a buffer gets built into position size for stop slippage, and has a real event ever blown past that estimate?
Scalpers feel this most around the minute a number is released or when liquidity thins in the late New York hours. A stop that was meant to risk 4 pips can easily cost 9 or 12, which turns a 1.5 to 1 setup into something much uglier.
Stop-limit orders sound like a fix, but they swap the slippage problem for a no-fill problem. Price blows through the limit, the position stays open, and the loss keeps growing while the trader watches.
The honest approach is to size the trade for the worst realistic fill, not the ideal one. If a 4 pip stop can become 10 on a bad day, the position needs to be small enough that 10 pips still hurts only a little.
How wide a buffer gets built into position size for stop slippage, and has a real event ever blown past that estimate?