Lovely spread of 2100 pps at Fxopen.com

Petar888

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Hedging positions of GBP/JPY closed at 132.540 for buy orders and 134.780 for sell orders. Now that is a truely "floatting" spread to enjoy. It really floated away with my cash.
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Please can you be more transparent and show comments on your screenshot in account history and all trades you had open so we can see how many trades you had open in total, with your account size and margin.

Please display all trades history from last week, and open trades.

and a screenshot of your Chart Showing where the spread widened when your trades got closed.

From there we can inspect what happened and see things more clearly

Thank you
 
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I thought the screenshot speaks enough of itself, but if you want further elaboration here it is.
Below is the official statement for this account from 15.07.2020 in 23:59 - Free margin of arround 150 - 200 %. Spread between GBP/JPY buy/sell 100 - 150 pps (this is already high, but later it got just funny).
In the screenshot above you can see massive margin calls 3 minutes later in 00:02 on 16.07.2020 with the spread increased to 2100 pps. At the same minute positions were closed at GBP/JPY course of 132.500 and 134.700, of course all to my loss. Of course GBP/JPY's course did noting like that in this specific minute. Of course spreads increase when volumes are low arround midnight CET, but what happened is an obvious forgery in order to close the positions. Fxopen themselves claim it is all normal margin call, and it is perfectly OK that at the same minute GBP/JPY buy orders trade at 132.5 and the sell orders trade at 134.7. Nothing wrong with them.
There are plenty of brokers doing things like that.
I have nice experience with a handful of them.
I am here to raise awareness among other users.
 

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@Petar888,

Sorry for your loss. Always nasty to wake up to this. FxOpen are an ok broker IMHO but their rollover spreads on GBPJPY do seem a bit higher than most other brokers.

It's good to raise awareness about this kind of thing but I believe it falls into the education department rather than the scam department. The forex market is a terribly unforgiving place as you have seen. I have been regularly schooled in the last 12 years. You seem to know how the market works and can hopefully move on with an even better understanding of just how hostile it can be.

If I may make some comment for you to consider :-

1. I used to do hedge grid trading. I stopped after I realised it is a poor strategy;
2. Martingale strategies also always end in tears;
3. Pay attention to the swaps that you paid. It is the silent death of any hedge strategy because it will drain your capital as soon as you have any extended drawdown, making it even more difficult to recover from said DD; find a broker that offers better swaps, or trade a pair that offers better swaps.
4. Here is a website where you can view average spreads for different instruments at many common brokers : Check spreads
5. GBPJPY would be the one of the last FX pairs I would select for a hedge grid strategy, along with GBPAUD and anything with TRY in it.

Good luck with the trading.
 
@Petar888,

but their rollover spreads on GBPJPY do seem a bit higher than most other brokers.
Come on now 2100 pips!!! Changes in 3 minutes from 120 pips to 2100 pips. This is not "a bit higher". And it is not about being educated that this can happen. I have been doing this obviously longer than you. Let us say 15 years. I have been using Fxopen the St. Nevis branch for 6 of them, I have had minor issues with them. But this 2100 pip spread is a novelty. If I knew that they are capable of achieving this spread I would have not traded with them of course. Probably others will not as well.
To put it another way. From your 12 years of experience would you please indicate a broker providing 2100 pips of spread for GBP/JPY pair, providing screenshots of such spread.
I have traded with dozens of brokers and I am currently using six brokers. I have never seen spreads higher than 30-40 pips and what you call a "rollover" I would call the spread increase to 150 pips on low volumes.
Now 2100 pips is just cheating to me.
Of course this is all matter of opinions. Let's give other traders the option to decide whether it is OK to use that broker and not a more reasonable one.
I would also like to stress out again that this the St. Nevis branch of Fxopen. The IMAHO regulated Australian and UK branches of Fxopen.com are entirely different legal entities. I believe you missed this part of the story.

I appreciate your comments, all in all, of course if I had not opened any positions I would have not lost any cash.

The admins will duely decide if the thread is for the trader's court, the scam alert section, the education section or the fun/chat sections.
I would still opt for the scam alert section, at least untill Fxopen.com representatives provide their explanation here, then already most likely it will be for the fun section.
 
That's indeed very high and it looks like there was a spike. You can get a refund for this. Ask the broker for that. I always got a refund for spikes, no matter which broker had this kinda "server errors".
 
That's indeed very high and it looks like there was a spike. You can get a refund for this. Ask the broker for that. I always got a refund for spikes, no matter which broker had this kinda "server errors".
Thank you for your support.
I did request explanation and refund. I was told positions closures were perfectly fine with them and that the terms and conditions for the spread of this account type were "floating".
You are right it theoretically could have been a server error. Fxopen.com have not confirmed this for me, they do not see any error at all. Hopefully they will post their opinion on the potential for a server error here.
There was a minor spike to the downside at midnight sharp (2 minutes before positions closure), it was a downward spike, my net positions, Sell - Buy were largely to the sell side. I had positioned myself to an expected longterm downtrend in GBP/JPY, while I was minorly hedging upside rebounds. The spike downwards should have caused profits and not position closure (you can see the profit close targets for some of my positions which were not executed because of the huge spread) I also had trailing stops, which should have been moved to profit from the spike, this also did not happen due to the excessive spread.
Let us see if there is going to be any sort of reasonable explanation of this situation from Fxopen. com side here.
Claiming servere error and doing complete or partial refund would be a pretty reasonable and fair solution to the dispute, but I am pretty sceptical it will go this way. I would expect further denialism, which would still confirm for me purposeful actions at their side or at least gross negligence to the extent of making them an unreliable scam broker.
 
On this page you can see their ECN-accounts had a max. spread of 41.6 (incl. commission): https://forexbenchmark.com/brokers/spreads/ So, no way there was a real midnight-spread of more than 120 on their servers for the other accounts then. Maybe they just did it on your account only. It's definitely an error on their side and they should give you a refund (like all the other retail-brokers do in such cases).
 
On this page you can see their ECN-accounts had a max. spread of 41.6 (incl. commission): https://forexbenchmark.com/brokers/spreads/ So, no way there was a real midnight-spread of more than 120 on their servers for the other accounts then. Maybe they just did it on your account only. It's definitely an error on their side and they should give you a refund (like all the other retail-brokers do in such cases).
This refers to Fxopen - UK, there is also Fxopen - AU, they are regulated brokers.
The spread scam described above is conducted by Fxopen - registered in St. Nevis and unregulated.
The three branches of this company have very different leverage, spread and support policies and services.
My claims are addressed to Fxopen.com
So far they keep rejecting my claims for refund, and claim the spread level was absolutely valid at the amount of 2100 pips.
They also apparently refuse to engage in the argument and pose their position here.
 
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