economic releases often result in some price volatility which may last just a few seconds, or longer. sometimes a news release may cause volatility, and a high volume order hitting the market may also cause price volatility yesterday's Friday NFP release was used to compare the spread from 3 brokers the main chart is a one second of the 6E Euro Fx contract, plus the New Order page of the MetaTrader 4 demo from Alpari New York is inserted on the 6E also inserted is Oanda's Recent Spreads of the eurusd, Oanda didn't disconnect the real FxTrade feed, it just stopped updating it, hence no chart generally the 6E Ask/Bid spread is one or two pips, in this example it seems to be the case except for the 6 -10 secs prior to the 8:30 release when the spread did go a bit nuts - were those seconds 'prior', or did some traders 'know' ? if the 6E is anything to go by it's the broker who widens the spread - obvious - however some brokers widen, and it appears some don't does your broker widen the spread, if so by how much ? do they widen before the release, at the time of a release, after the release ? how long do they keep the widened spread on ?