Acceptable slippage?

I'm curious, what do you find to be acceptable slippage upon entry/exit under normal market conditions trading EUR/USD? Currently I'm experiencing 2-5 seconds delays on entry and the slippage that comes with that. My internet connection is fast with a ping to my broker (Alpari RU) of <30 ms... Also tried Alpari UK but with worse slippage but also worse ping from my computer.

The delay is probably normal for many brokers but I'm hoping to find a broker with faster execution than that. Any suggestions?

2-5 seconds is absolute insanity!

Don't even bother mentioning the name of the broker, just move.

I have two brokers I work with. Both of them fill, round-turn back to me in less than 500ms. So that's 250ms to get my order, process it, then 250ms to tell me about it.

I do slippage analysis all the time to make sure my broker isn't cheating me.

There is sometimes slippage, but over the course of 100 trades, your slippage should be net neutral. That means that half slip in your favor and half slip against you. With some normal deviation.

But 2-5 seconds, is just plain wrong.

-The Lazy One at LazyManForex-

Thanks for the feedback! I added more log functions to my system and yes, roundtrip order execution time is consistently just over 5 seconds even though ping is very low.

Help me to understand why a broker adds delay this way. One reason I can think of is greed, by adding an artificial delay they can basically choose slippage level and thereby an additional spread. Is there some other reason I'm unaware of? Doesn't the broker always profit from spread (not etc/ndd-style obviously)?

Brokers add delay to see if they can get a fill at a better price compared to what you clicked. If not, they will just quote your fill at a price away from where you clicked. It's guaranteed profit.

Hey, they gotta get that rebate money from somewhere right. You think it comes out of their pockets?

This is the method used by STP, non-dealing-desk brokers to profit from you.

Time for a new broker

yup.

Thanks again. I'll try a new broker. This time I'll monitor my logs so hopefully this was the last time I was scammed

Well presumably, if it's merely a time delay, some of the time your fills are actually BETTER than you'd expect right?

Unless you're basically sniping, in which case I expect they're being defensive. My guess is that you're attempting some kind of latency arb, as thats usually who, on a retail forum, would have a view on ping stats, round trip times etc.

Am I warm?

Trading at market with a MM is probably not the best idea to start with. Before I knew any better I traded this way and experienced some terrible fills.