Problem Pepperstone: Possibly manipulating spread

[Todoimaginario]

Hello again.

First of all, this is not a complaint. It's more like a warning for the traders who are with Pepperstone.

I've been trying several different brokers this week. I opened demo accounts in almost a dozen of them, and I've been monitoring their services, looking for possible price manipulations. Just this morning I came across an anomaly in the prices of the EUR/JPY in Pepperstone.

I am aware that the spread tends to go crazy during the first hour of trading every day, but in this occasion, the spread went from zero to 41.4 pips! and it only lasted for 1 second, and then it went back to normal.

I compared it with another broker, IC Markets, and the spread on this broker was only 7.6 pips. I also compared it with the price provided by trading view, just to see that only the Bid price went crazy. The Ask was normal all the time.

My guess is that they had a trader with a very large long position in EUR/JPY, and they manipulated the Bid price just to take his stop loss. For me, this is the kind of unethical and scamming attitude that makes me stay the **** away from a broker. As I said, I didn't make a deposit with them; this was just a demo account. But I wouldn't be surprised to see the trader who was taken out of the game in a few days starting a thread here in the forum, complaining about this particular case.

I hope I prevented a honest trader from losing his money with this scammer broker in the future.

PD: Sorry for the bad quality of the picture. You would have to download it to zoom it if you want to see the prices. I've also attached the picture in .ZIP format here.

PD 2: This is a Razor account with Pepperstone, which means the spread should be lower because I have to pay commissions every time I open a position.

 

[4evermaat]

Not sure why some people are obsessed with wanting to throw away their deposit. OTC forex is actually a complex product. And a large part of the complexity is the fact that it is not traded on an exchange. So this gives the broker the ability to (even legally in many cases) make up a price and give it to you. They can also renege a deal that is unfavorable (to them).

An agency model brokerage is your only hope. If only the retail trader could overcome their gambling/greed impulses and trade with the handful of real brokers. But these brokers do not offer Binary options, signing bonuses, and other foolish incentives to game-ify trading. So I guess they are not too interesting.

Some of my future articles will address these issues. But in short, the average retail trader has no idea the sharks that exist in the forex sea. And their trading strategies aren't usually sophisticated enough to vet the broker either.

 

[FxMaster]

Hello again.

First of all, this is not a complaint. It's more like a warning for the traders who are with Pepperstone.

I've been trying several different brokers this week. I opened demo accounts in almost a dozen of them, and I've been monitoring their services, looking for possible price manipulations. Just this morning I came across an anomaly in the prices of the EUR/JPY in Pepperstone.

I am aware that the spread tends to go crazy during the first hour of trading every day, but in this occasion, the spread went from zero to 41.4 pips! and it only lasted for 1 second, and then it went back to normal.

I compared it with another broker, IC Markets, and the spread on this broker was only 7.6 pips. I also compared it with the price provided by trading view, just to see that only the Bid price went crazy. The Ask was normal all the time.

View attachment 53472
My guess is that they had a trader with a very large long position in EUR/JPY, and they manipulated the Bid price just to take his stop loss. For me, this is the kind of unethical and scamming attitude that makes me stay the **** away from a broker. As I said, I didn't make a deposit with them; this was just a demo account. But I wouldn't be surprised to see the trader who was taken out of the game in a few days starting a thread here in the forum, complaining about this particular case.

I hope I prevented a honest trader from losing his money with this scammer broker in the future.

PD: Sorry for the bad quality of the picture. You would have to download it to zoom it if you want to see the prices. I've also attached the picture in .ZIP format here.

PD 2: This is a Razor account with Pepperstone, which means the spread should be lower because I have to pay commissions every time I open a position.

First of all, invite the company by using the invite company option to your thread. And if you are unable to locate the option then this thread "Tutorial: How to Invite a company to your thread." will help you to find out.

Note: Invitation button will be enabled when your thread passes 96 hours.
Note 2: Make sure to follow the suggestions correctly, when you do it correctly you will get below message in your thread automatically.
Note 3: Make sure to share your account number (Only account number). Many time this help companies to find out you are genuine or not.

 

[FxMaster]

Also, share your story as a review here https://www.forexpeacearmy.com/forex-reviews/7523/pepperstone.com

 

[Todoimaginario]

First of all, invite the company by using the invite company option to your thread. And if you are unable to locate the option then this thread "Tutorial: How to Invite a company to your thread." will help you to find out.

Note: Invitation button will be enabled when your thread passes 96 hours.
Note 2: Make sure to follow the suggestions correctly, when you do it correctly you will get below message in your thread automatically.
Note 3: Make sure to share your account number (Only account number). Many time this help companies to find out you are genuine or not.

Done My account number with them is 8155487 (Demo02). Last week they called me like three times on my phone to ask me why I haven't funded my account yet. I'm still waiting for them to call me again to tell them this story.
I'll also leave a review of them. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[The Reaper of F]

Done My account number with them is 8155487 (Demo02). Last week they called me like three times on my phone to ask me why I haven't funded my account yet. I'm still waiting for them to call me again to tell them this story.
I'll also leave a review of them. Thanks for the suggestion.

Well, they wouldn't dare to call you again since you left a review here. A constructive criticism is interesting, however, in light of the psyche of the participant - they may very well treat it as an offense.

 

[FxMaster]

Done My account number with them is 8155487 (Demo02). Last week they called me like three times on my phone to ask me why I haven't funded my account yet. I'm still waiting for them to call me again to tell them this story.
I'll also leave a review of them. Thanks for the suggestion.

You are not done with inviting them to this thread. Read and follow this Tutorial: How to Invite a company to your thread properly.

 

[Todoimaginario]

You are not done with inviting them to this thread. Read and follow this Tutorial: How to Invite a company to your thread properly.

I think I still have to wait a few hours to complete the 96 minimum hours requirement. I will invite the company as soon as the option is available.

 

[Todoimaginario]

The OP has invited the company to this discussion on May 13, 2020 at 5:58 AM

 

[Pepperstone Support]

Hi Traders,
Thank you for inviting us to this discussion as you are correct to say spreads fluctuated, but no trades would have been affected. Let me tell you why.
There are two important points; Pepperstone disabled execution of trades from 23:59 – 00:01 (2 mins). This is done as ‘roll overs’ is the lowest liquidity time of day, so we disable execution to avoid an impact to our traders.
Whilst it's correct that spreads did move to 10 pips, this occurred at 00:00 server time. At 00:01, our first executable tick of the day, the spread was 2 pips. (See image below)
'rollover period' which is 00:00 serve time/midnight server time (GMT+3) is when banks and institutions reset their servers for the new trading day, enabling updates. Again, we want to clarify at this time no party can execute a trade.
Another point I'd like to mention is that Pepperstone does not manipulate pricing. We receive our pricing from external liquidity providers. As a non-dealing desk broker, we are proud to say we do not create our pricing and have never deviated from the price received by third-party liquidity providers
I’ve added a guide below that talks about spread fluctuation in more detail. It's an important read for any trader and I hope you enjoy it.

https://pepperstone.com/en-au/education/bid-offer-spreads/

Dear OP, I've tried to call you to ensure this is understood, but let me know if there is a better time to call.