Alpari UK

Eddy 15

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Hi my name is Eddy,
I’ve been trading with Alpari uk for about a year and a half now, they are a very good broker and I haven’t had any problems with them till now.

Recently I lost two trades, the problem I have is this: I use a lot of methods to trade the market, one of them being before and during news events, and I’ve been trading like this now for four years. I always trade with a pending order with a stop loss and profit target set, on the first trade I’ve lost, it showed in my trading history that I’ve lost 20 pips, but the money I’ve lost on the same trade is the equivalent of 60 pips, which is three times more than I was prepared to lose. Trading is my only source of income, and I work to a certain percentage per month so this was devastating for me. I wrote them a letter asking them to explain what has happened:

Hi,
My name is Eddy and I’ve been trading with Alpari almost two years now, I really enjoy trading with you guys and the support is excellent, this morning I had a trade on the Aud/Usd, I had a sell stop order in at 1.01671 and my stop loss was set at 1.01870. Price triggered me and then moved to take me out on my stop loss, so I lost the trade, this is not what bothered me though. The distance between 1.01870 and 1.01671 is 19.9 pips (that I was suppose to lose), now if I work it out according to my lot size which was 2.94 then I’m only suppose to lose $ 585.06, and on my trading history it shows me I lost $ 1752.24! Now I can’t understand why I lost so much as I had my stop loss in place, I document all my trades and even take short videos of them and this never happened to me before. So I really hope you can fix this problem for me, as I hope it was a mistake from your side. I don’t expect you to give me back the hole $ 1752.24 because I would have lost the trade anyway, but restore the amount I should have lost in the first place. Attached you will find a screenshot of the trade.
I hope to hear from you as soon as possible.
Regards
Eddy


Now as you can see in the letter I told them that I would have lost the trade anyway but they should refund me the extra money I’ve lost. They replayed to my letter (which I still have), and in short this is what they told me:

Stop Loss Orders are sometimes filled away from the desired price due to gaps in the market. This occurs when currency prices are volatile or liquidity is thin. In these scenarios, orders cannot always be filled at the exact price.
For this reason Stop Loss Orders are accepted on a “best endeavours” basis. We will try and execute at your chosen price but this can never be guaranteed because your preferred price may simply not be available.
Although we consider it reasonable to expect a client to monitor both the market and the orders they have placed, it’s important to understand that orders are sometimes overtaken by events.


After receiving the letter from them I wrote back telling them I understand that triggering the order may result in slippage, and I’m prepared for that, but I have never experienced my stop loss being exceeded, this was the first time this happened to me, I could not understand it as I set my order 5 minutes before the news announcement. They did not replay to this letter.

A few days later I lost my second trade, and exactly the same thing happened to me, my stop loss was exceeded. I wrote them another letter and this was their replay in short:

Please bear in mind that the market is very volatile at times as you are aware. Please further note that we do not interfere in any trades, and neither can we exert any control over market prices, which are supplied to us directly by market makers.

It is evident that your orders were placed with a view to trading the news release, and it is unfortunate that this was not successful.
However this style of trading is inherently risky and you should ensure that you fully understand these risks before placing such trades.

Stop Loss orders should not be considered a means of transferring risk from yourself to Alpari UK.
We do not, and never have, guaranteed Stop Loss orders.


So now I’m filing this case in FPA, the sentence I’m most worried about is the last one, I was not aware of this, and want to know if anybody else is. So please if somebody could just clear this up for me and help me I will be very grateful.

I look forward to hear from you,
Regards
Eddy
 
It sounds like you are getting nailed by slippage around large news events.

Pop open a 5 minute or 1 minute chart and scroll back to the time the trade closed? Are there any REALLY long candles (or even gaps between candles reaching past your SL to the price they closed the order at?

Unfortunately, the reality is that slippage around news events does happen. The amount varies both by how big the news movement is and how good of liquidity the broker has access to.

Always test this sort of thing with the smallest lot size. Having your first news trade use 2.94 lots is taking a big risk to see how well the broker can fill you during a news event.
 
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