News Trading and wide spreads

[westofpluto]

A couple of years ago, it seemed like lots of traders were doing news trading, many successfully. I never did news trading but I understand that brokers have widened their spreads during news evens so that news trading with straddles (simultaneous buystop and sellstop orders) is no longer likely to be profitable. Widened spreads, non-guaranteed executions and whipsaws cause problems during news events. Is this still the case? Or does it depend on your choice of broker? Or is news trading this way basically dead?

 

[Pharaoh]

If not dead, definitely in critical condition.

Spike trading is almost impossible with the majority of brokers. Retraces of the spike can be done with some.

Personally, I prefer technical trading.

 

[Matt Miller]

Any broker with fixed spreads should be okay, but there aren't many of those anymore either. One of the reasons I'm upset at the loss of TDFX.

 

[Pharaoh]

During the news, real spreads exceed the fixed spread. Those brokers will either give you slippage and requotes, or won't allow news trading. Otherwise, they'd be giving away money to you.

 

[Soji4x]

hmmn... i think a traders choice should simply be to stick to Technical Trading.
At least you trade by what you understand, i.e "..the understanding is fruitful"