Guys, how do I know that my trades are being executed the way they should be and the broker is not playing games with me? I have traded some forex a while back when I knew absolutely nothing about the markets and for example I remember they used to widen the spread during volatility. Can they do shady stuff with stocks too?
The Virtual Dealer plugin is not common anymore. So there are no tricks to individual traders. You can feel free to place limit orders when they widen the spreads. But this is only the case when there is much less liquidity around high impact news like FOMC, NFP or CPI. Do not worry about such tricks. These are because of the markets only.
He doesn’t know what he means by that, that’s why he is asking, Ha-Ha. Basically, if you are not trading CFDs there is less reason for concern.
Well, I am asking because it is one thing what you sign and it is another thing what happens in reality after that…
isn't widening the spread during volatility common practice? and moving the quote depending on inventory, other markets, ...
I’m not an expert myself, but I think it’s a good obvious evidence that your orders are being handled the right way if you have direct market access, at least on that level of thinking about the topic.
It should be mentioned somewhere that you are being charged for that by your services provider… Other than that you should be seeing something like this somewhere in the panel from which you are sending your orders. Or like this Simply put, those are the exchanges to which your order is being sent and if it is being sent to one, you are not trading against your broker as in your forex case, because they widen the spread in order to fill your orders when otherwise they wouldn’t have been filled – in other words they stop you out on purpose(stop hunting…), which means they might have held your order internally and might have never sent it to an exchange. Of course you never know what happens with your order after that, at the exchanges themselves(if you want some more info read Flash boys by Michael Lewis) but you can’t give up electronic trading and trade through newspaper adds, can you .
Oh.. okay. I understand. A lot of food for thought and matters to educate myself on. Thank you all for your inputs!