Slippage, Requotes and Stop Hunting: Bad Execution or Broker Fraud?

Every trader eventually watches a stop get hit by a wick that reverses immediately and concludes the broker did it deliberately. Sometimes that suspicion is wrong and the market simply moved. Sometimes it is right. The difference shows up in the pattern, not in any single trade.

Slippage

Slippage is the gap between the price you asked for and the price you got. It happens because prices move between your click and the fill, and it is unavoidable around news, at the session open, and in thin liquidity.

The normal version is symmetric. Roughly as often as slippage costs you, it should also work in your favour — better fills as well as worse ones. Check your trade history over a few dozen fills and count both.

Slippage that lands against you every single time is not market behaviour. Asymmetric slippage is a pricing decision, and it is the clearest evidence of a broker taking the good side and passing on the bad one.

Requotes

A requote is the platform refusing your order and offering a different price. On a fast-moving instrument it is a legitimate consequence of a dealing-desk model where a human or algorithm confirms each trade.

It becomes a problem when it is selective. Requotes that appear only when you are winning, only on profitable strategies, or only on larger sizes are not about volatility. Persistent requoting on an account that is up is worth documenting carefully.

"Stop hunting"

This is the accusation brokers hear most and the one most often misdirected.

The usual innocent explanation is spread widening. Your stop executes on the bid or ask, not the mid price you see on the chart, and around news the spread can widen sharply for a few seconds. A stop placed a couple of pips beyond an obvious level will be taken out by a spread that briefly doubles, and the chart afterwards shows a wick that looks surgical. Nobody targeted you.

There is also a structural reason clusters of stops get hit: retail traders place them in the same predictable places, and large participants trade toward that liquidity. That is the market, not your broker.

What is not innocent is a feed that consistently prints highs and lows your broker's competitors did not. If your stop is hit at a level that never traded on two or three other price sources, that is a data problem worth escalating.

How to tell which one you have

Collect evidence rather than impressions. Export your trade history and count slippage in both directions. Screenshot the platform with timestamps when something looks wrong. Compare the disputed candle against another feed for the same instrument and second.

Then look at the broker's model. A market maker takes the other side of your trade and profits when you lose, which is legal and disclosed but creates an obvious conflict. An ECN or STP broker earns commission on volume regardless of your result.

Finally, look at the regulator. Under a tier-one licence, execution quality and best execution are supervised obligations, and there is a complaints route with teeth. Without one, you have a support ticket and a company with no reason to answer it — which is why the regulatory status matters more than the spread advertised.

Bottom line: one bad fill proves nothing, but slippage that only ever runs one way is a pattern — document it, and take it to the regulator rather than the support desk.