On friday, may 12, at about 4:50 AM EST I believe, at a normally peacefull time, the market went crazy. I was watching the eur-usd. It went up 50 then down 50 probably 10 times within 30 seconds. I was so busy hyperventilating I lost track exactly. Did anyone else see it, or was I hallucinating? I am curious how often this happens and usually when and why? I've seen volatility at 10 am or 8:30 EST but nothing this crazy. Whats the worst that can happen? Whats the most anyone has seen the market move like this? Up and down how many times? Esp for eur-usd but other pairs too: Can it move 300,400,500 pips in seconds? What is the biggest daily move? How often does it bounce up and down like crazy like that?
Also, how would the various ecn's and brokers execute you at such at time. Anyone trade on currenex/oanda/ib/hotspot/etc.etc. at a time like this. Would like to know the worst the spreads can get. Esp. curious about currenex. If you have currenex set to "fill fully immediately or kill" will it actually fill you at the rate you click on in these times? What about IB, hotspot? Also, are the executions honored or is there a risk they will be reviewed later by some of the brokers or ecns? Is this even possible on an ECN, or whats done is done? I imagine the bucket shops are terrible at these times so I won't even ask about them.
which broker are you using. You shoudl be able to tell by the price action if they're false quotes or not. I must say that on friday about 10 minutes before the tb release usdchf on ib was gapping up and down about 30 pips as you described. With respect to how much it can gap over a few seconds, aug 2004 payrolls when it came out 32k cable gapped over 200 pips in seconds. THere hasn't been anything as crazy since then though