as i am sure you have all experienced yourself... i get a bad tick or two every now and then in my charting software. they tell me that the bad ticks are broadcast that way from the exchange and theres nothing they can do about it, which is fine, i dont have a problem with it as far as charting goes... BUT... im worried that bad ticks, if they really do come that way strait out of the exchange, might accidently trigger stop orders with my broker and stuff like that... Has this ever happened to any of you, or is am i just worrying unnecessarily?
Yes it has happened to me. Best way to deal with it is to use mental stops or if your broker has the option configure your stops to trigger by a method other then the last print.
I have seen bad ticks appear on the chart but they didn't show in the DOM with the exact same data feed so I don't think you should worry to much. That was with Zen Fire trading 6E. The best way to avoid this is to get a quality data feed for charting that filters for bad ticks like DTN IQ.