Hi there, Has anyone watched or traded DKK/SEK (Danish Krone / Swedish Krona) today, June 22, 6:59AM GMT. A colleague of mine who trades via Interactive Brokers was caught/stopped out at 1.40xx levels in a price spike that lasted a mere 7 seconds and which reverted back to the exact same price before the spike. I checked and neither EBS, Hotspot, LMAX, Baxter, nor Reuters show any such price spike. My colleague contacted Interactive Brokers to file a claim with them and to investigate why he was stopped out. The IB rep condescendingly insisted it was their liquidity providers and there is nothing they can do. I could not believe when I heard this story and I post here because I like to see whether there are others who witnessed similar stories trading fx with IB and how their issue was resolved. I take it upon myself to post here because I trade fx with IB in pretty large size (we are both non US nationals). It greatly worries me and I will definitely pull my entire account and consider what to do next without IB should IB insist on its claim that those were valid tradable prices. This is a 2% price spike that lasted 7 seconds, with no economic news releases, no changes in fundamentals, nothing. All other currency pairs did not move at all. This is not the moaning of someone who lost money on a bad trade (I did not even trade myself)..but put yourself into the situation of someone who did, how would you like it when a seemingly reputable broker with whom you have been for over 10 years suddenly moves prices like some of the worst bucket shops and criminal fx gangs? Please take a look at the following chart and times and sales. (times in Beijing/HK time zone)
It is shocking that this 300 pt spike did not happen with any other platform. The time was 7:59:50am London time. There can be movement around that time, but nothing that extreme should of happened.
File complaint to CFTC. Stop orders should be held off platform till you verify market behavior, especially in low liquidity cross pairs(non majors). Stop orders aren’t guaranteed to fill you at your stop. That’s why they are exploitable.
If you dig into your IB pnl reports, you can find out which bank / liquidity provider filled you at the shitty price. That will give you more info to work with when you talk to IB and also you can try to follow up with that bank. But seriously unless it's a huge loss, I don't think it's worth the effort as the probability you can get trade revoked is low. Retail traders are always screwed...
Why did no other broker/platform have this spike? The only explanation i can think of is that IB is using a single liquidity provider for this pair or a different one from everyone else. I would avoid trading this pair with IB until you find out why this only happened with IB.
Please ask IB support, I clicked randomly to reach it so can't remember. Too lazy to login and go dig ... But I'm very sure that report exists, filled by banks like CS, JPM etc all the time. It can be seen.
Read their website. IB FX has access to 16 liquidity providers with more than 60% of the market share in the global interbank market.
Probably Not, but I guess most traders know DKK/SEK is not as liquid as majors. I've been converting £ to $ on IB for years and never had any problem. It is not IB's fault if you trade in illiquid securities. All markets (treasuries, stocks, fx, etc) can experience flash spike/crash. It's is the downside of electronic trading and traders should always be prepared.