Current price differs by up to 5 pips at different bokers - any explanation to this?

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arvo

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Hello everyone,

I'm new to forex (just two months' experience), but taking it seriously :).

I've started comparing different brokers and found an interesting anomaly - the current prices shown by different brokers, whether on their websites or through their desktop platforms, often differ by up to 5 pips. Measuring the historical candle data (on the same period charts) reveals the same discrepancies between the different brokers' screens (i.e. candle/spike top and bottom prices do not correspond). :confused: Interestengly, I found those discrepancies only on some currency pairs, not all. Is this normal? Or could this be indicative of some kind of data manipulation? Is there any way to check the REAL market price (well, et least historical candles data) to know which broker is the most accurate?

Arvo
 
arvo said:
Hello everyone,

I'm new to forex (just two months' experience), but taking it seriously :).

I've started comparing different brokers and found an interesting anomaly - the current prices shown by different brokers, whether on their websites or through their desktop platforms, often differ by up to 5 pips. Measuring the historical candle data (on the same period charts) reveals the same discrepancies between the different brokers' screens (i.e. candle/spike top and bottom prices do not correspond). :confused: Interestengly, I found those discrepancies only on some currency pairs, not all. Is this normal? Or could this be indicative of some kind of data manipulation? Is there any way to check the REAL market price (well, et least historical candles data) to know which broker is the most accurate?

Arvo
Click to expand...

you are not trading the market you are trading made up prices. the whole game is rigged to take your money capiche.
 
why do people continue to use spread betting firms if its all made up? surely if everyone always lost then people would have gotten wise to it by now, and spread betting wouldnt exist
 
awaw said:
why do people continue to use spread betting firms if its all made up? surely if everyone always lost then people would have gotten wise to it by now, and spread betting wouldnt exist
Click to expand...

:LOL:

you are definately thinking along the right lines.

The next question is how can you benefit from this nonsense ?
 
awaw said:
why do people continue to use spread betting firms if its all made up? surely if everyone always lost then people would have gotten wise to it by now, and spread betting wouldnt exist
Click to expand...

simple my dear chap. People are attracted to SB due to the low margins and the ease with which you can open an account and start punting. The majority of SBs don't hedge their clients so when you look at the accounts of SB's what you are seeing in the profit line is the punters money.

When people start out trading they want to believe it is easy they want to believe they are different and people will keep throwing money at it, it's amazing how powerful the whole game is. Some people lose big sums SBing. Why does a gambler still use a casino, if they didn't the places would be empty and they would close down. capiche.

Now some people do win. These people are generally in 2 groups. The first group have just got lucky but they don't know it. You can make money flipping a coin if you are lucky. The second group are the small minority who know how to trade and they have learnt to trade on the real market (as if there is any other way! lol). This group of people have so much of the right experience that they consistently make money, normally they have at least 6-8 years experience. They are able to take money from the market when the market gives it as they have a highly developed edge which is able to overcome all the obstacles that the SB present. i.e. wide spread, fast and loose prices, fun and games at times of high volume.

This second group of traders are tolerated by the SB's to some extent as long as they don't take the michael. They are happy to give back some money, if everyone lost it would look more suspicious capiche.

SB is ok IF you have a huge edge, stay out of the news and keep your stops wide but unless you are able to trade profitably on a direct market I doubt you can trade profitably on an SB.

my $0.02.
 
And what is spread betting? Surely well-established brokers would not be cheating their customers?
 
arvo said:
And what is spread betting? Surely well-established brokers would not be cheating their customers?
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I am sorry if you don't like my answer. trading can be brutal.

totally depends on your definition of cheating. SB's dont have to cheat in the sense you are thinking of to get your money. If you go into a bookies and back a horse and it doesn't win you dont go up to the manager and say they cheated you? capiche. If you go to a casino and lose do you feel cheated?

When you place a trade with an SB you don't pay commission right. Now go look up the profits for some well established SB firms. Ask yourself, where is this profit coming from?

Find one market you like, trade it directly and find out why it moves. end of.
 
arvo said:
And what is spread betting? Surely well-established brokers would not be cheating their customers?
Click to expand...

Well established brokers do cheat their customers. We know this because many of them have been heavily fined for doing so. One broker was fined $20 million so you can see the extent of the cheating that goes on.
 
the thing i dont get is... how is it a fair bet if they are moving the market on their platform when it suitd them??? atleast with horse racing once the horses start running the bookies have no say in the end result, they cant move the finishing line can they
 
i may be being naive or stupid here (im sure someone will tell me if i am) but if you look at capital spreads fsa register number on their website (3218125) it is actually 1 digit too long if you look on the fsa register all numbers are only 6 digits.... curious??
 
awaw said:
the thing i dont get is... how is it a fair bet if they are moving the market on their platform when it suitd them??? atleast with horse racing once the horses start running the bookies have no say in the end result, they cant move the finishing line can they
Click to expand...

That is a very good analogy, in SBing they can move it, or if its suits cancel the race after the fact. The following thread explained this very well, however its hard to find the videos now as the broker was getting them deleted from various sites.

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/for...tor-virtual-dealer-other-plugins-setting.html
 
pboyles said:
That is a very good analogy, in SBing they can move it, or if its suits cancel the race after the fact. The following thread explained this very well, however its hard to find the videos now as the broker was getting them deleted from various sites.

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/for...tor-virtual-dealer-other-plugins-setting.html
Click to expand...

I'm totally confused now regarding Spread Betting now. For sure this does not refer to established brokers, including ECN brokers?

But you convinced me to be very careful and at least double-check against other brokers... I started this thread when I noticed discrepancies on my platform on the demo account of an ECN broker in comparison to my current broker (whose prices I trust because they seem to match those on the dailyfx and oanda live streams). Meanwhile, today the ECN broker's prices were going a few pips higher than the others brokers' prices for quite a while - that's what caused my doubts. Then they went back to normal, and I just managed to get a few screenshots as proof. And this was in fact on the practice account, which would hardly be rigged deliberately to rip you off ... but come to think of it, if these conspiracies are true, then it would be clever to have rigged demo settings (because you can't accuse anyone of fraud on demo anyway, it's just a demonstration of how things work, right?) and then transfer the same settings by default to a live account once it's opened. This would be very crooked, of course, but to expect this of an ECN broker I do not dare yet... Or do you mean to say that they are all the same SB businesses you're speaking about?
 
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