Slippage and requotes: why the fill differs from the price you saw

You click buy at 1.1650 and the order fills at 1.1653. Three pips gone before the trade has
started. That is slippage — an ordinary feature of the market, and the one most often mistaken for
the broker cheating.

1. How slippage happens

The price on your screen is the latest price, not a guaranteed one. Between your click
and the order reaching the server and filling, the market has moved on.

In a liquid market that gap is too small to notice. In three situations it is not:

• Immediately after data — price jumps several pips at once, with no resting
  orders in between.
• The Monday open — the market moved while it was closed, leaving a
  gap.
• Thin liquidity — session changeovers, or public holidays in a major market.

2. Slippage is not always against you

The part few traders know: slippage runs both ways. If price jumps in your favour, the order
fills better than you asked — positive slippage.

A broker filling honestly lets both happen. If you are only ever slipped against
and never in your favour, that is the signal worth investigating — not slippage itself.

3. Requotes: a different mechanism, often confused

A requote is the broker refusing your requested price and asking again whether
you accept a new one. It belongs to the instant-execution model.

The basic difference:

• Market execution — the order always fills, at the market price at the moment of
  filling. Slippage possible, requotes impossible.
• Instant execution — the order fills at your price or not at all. No slippage,
  but requotes.

Neither is better in the abstract. For a news trader a requote is the more dangerous of the two,
because the market keeps moving while you consider the new price.

4. Slippage on a stop loss: the real risk

This is where slippage does the most damage. A stop loss is not a promise to exit at that level —
it is a market order triggered
when price reaches it.

If price gaps through the level, the order fills at the first available price, which can be far
away. In a major event — a currency intervention, a geopolitical headline — that distance runs to
hundreds of pips.

The practical consequence: a position’s real risk can be larger than the number you
calculated from the stop. Which is why you should not commit the whole account to one
position even with a stop in place.

5. Five ways to limit the damage

• Stay out of the market for fifteen minutes around major data. The most effective
  measure, and it costs nothing.
• Use pending orders rather than market orders where you can — you control the
  entry price.
• Set a maximum deviation if your platform supports it, so an order cannot fill
  too far away.
• Cut size during volatile periods rather than holding the same size and hoping.
• Do not hold a large position over the weekend when an event could develop
  outside trading hours.

6. Hidden costs and visible ones

Slippage is a hidden cost — off the fee
schedule, unpredictable, different on every trade. Spread and commission are the opposite: known in
advance, fixed, and calculable for a whole month.

Because the hidden part cannot be controlled, tightening the visible part is worth more. Trading
in deep-liquidity hours reduces slippage and the
spread at once, while a rebate returns part of the fixed cost on every lot you close.

Sources

• ForexSpreadCompare — Spread behaviour across sessions (2026)
• Compare Forex Brokers — Execution models: market vs instant
• TIOmarkets — Costs, execution and how account types differ

This article is for information only and is not investment advice. Execution models differ by
broker and by account type. Leveraged forex
and CFD trading carries a high level of risk and can cost you your entire deposit.