Platform Irregularity: no trade rejection message

[twinj]

Hi guys,
A certain spread betting company I have used for a few years has disappointed me recently.

On 16th December, I entered a long trade on the DAX at 9220. There was no trade rejection message so I thought it was accepted. But looking at my open positions, I could not find the trade. I did not open another trade because since I did not get a trade rejection message, the attempt may be still pending. I contacted my account manager to find out. After a few hours he tells me it was a trade rejection after all. I am in the middle of asking why there was such a platform irregularity.

The whole thing is made worse by the fact that the DAX went to 9700 on that day.

I am not complaining about the trade rejection because it comes with the territory. Why did I not receive a trade rejection message? If I had got the message, I would have had the chance to try again without affecting my risk strategy.

Has anyone experienced these platform irregularities or anything else?

 

[highbury fx]

Hi guys,
I did not open another trade because since I did not get a trade rejection message, the attempt may be still pending. I contacted my account manager to find out. After a few hours he tells me it was a trade rejection after all. /QUOTE]

After a few hours? he should have told you within a minute of you asking him to "find out". Your query to him is questioning his exposure as a firm and that is a priority query that has to be dealt with quickly and accurately - in other words he would have your position information to hand almost immediately.

They will be able to show you a trade audit trail of the price you were trying to deal on and their response to your trade request. Every step will be time stamped for clarity. There are 4-5 steps (price you are being quoted, size and direction of your trade request, acknowledgement to them they have received the order, confirmation/rejection)

I'm not going to assume that because there was a big move you were rejected for being a cheeky so and so but none the less, they have to react quicker than a few hours.

Ask them for the audit trail of your trade beginning with your trade request and go from there. At least you'll be able to see what happened.

 

[twinj]

Thanks for your comment highbury. It was an email query so... I will ask for this audit trail to see if it brings up anything. Thanks for your advice.

 

[twinj]

Asked for the audit trail just now.

I am not even getting compensated or paid for this work in pointing out this problem.

I am still furious about this anomaly and missed opportunity that I feel I should be compensated. What sort of things do you get compensated for from spread betting companies? Perhaps, anomalous spikes that hit stops? That would be irregular behaviour so as what I experienced is irregular behaviour, it should be compensated. Does that sound logical?

 

[gle101]

Asked for the audit trail just now.

I am not even getting compensated or paid for this work in pointing out this problem.

I am still furious about this anomaly and missed opportunity that I feel I should be compensated. What sort of things do you get compensated for from spread betting companies? Perhaps, anomalous spikes that hit stops? That would be irregular behaviour so as what I experienced is irregular behaviour, it should be compensated. Does that sound logical?

Trade rejections is just a part of the game trading with market makers. Most of the time one gets a message of the rejection itself, but there are times one simply do not get it. There are plenty of missed opportunities but new ones comes along frequently. There are a few brokers that I feel is better in this regard, executing trades without a rejection or a new price quote. I have often found that the platform infrastructure with some of the market makers is not good enough copeing with a extreme volatility.

 

[highbury fx]

Asked for the audit trail just now.

I am not even getting compensated or paid for this work in pointing out this problem.

I am still furious about this anomaly and missed opportunity that I feel I should be compensated. What sort of things do you get compensated for from spread betting companies? Perhaps, anomalous spikes that hit stops? That would be irregular behaviour so as what I experienced is irregular behaviour, it should be compensated. Does that sound logical?

why would they pay you? you're trying to find out what happened for your own benefit, no one elses.

find out what happened first and talk to them nicely and professionally and you may get some where. If you go in all guns blazing making accusations you'll most likely be met with a similar response. You want them to respond to you in a way which will help resolve this for you.

if you genuinely feel you have a justified grievance there are avenues open to you to escalate your claim. But before you do that you need to find out what happened, so ask them and if you don't get a response in 24 hours then go to their compliance. Once you do that you have begun a formal process that places an obligation on your broker to respond within a certain time. If you get a response you don't like or they don't respond then you go to the FOS.

 

[twinj]

Hi gle101, thanks for your comment. So it appears you have experienced this irregularity of getting a trade rejection message at times and no message at some other times?

I agree opportunities come along but a 500 point move opportunity does not come so often. I had the virtual minimum which was rejected.

I have thought about brokers that do not reject a trade but it is uncertain. I am not too bothered about trade rejections but if they do not send a trade rejection message, it is risky to trade. You wonder what happened to that trade. Suppose you trade again and find the other suddenly pops up. So you will have twice the size instead so it messes with your risk strategy.

 

[twinj]

Hi highbury, thanks for your response. You are right that I was upset and did the guns approach. It was not the way to approach the matter.

The fact is, it was a month ago and I had really got over it. I assumed they had a new approach when rejecting. They no longer give you a message. I thought that makes sense. I just monitor the open position window and if it does not appear there, it must not have got through. So you don't have to bother clicking on the rejection message.

Then I found out recently that there procedure is still to send out a trade rejection message. So once again I felt annoyed that the platform did not operate regularly.

I asked for the audit trail and all they tell me is that the price was not available. No mention of why I did not get a trade rejection message.

I have sent an email to the compliance team yesterday.

 

[gle101]

Hi gle101, thanks for your comment. So it appears you have experienced this irregularity of getting a trade rejection message at times and no message at some other times?

I agree opportunities come along but a 500 point move opportunity does not come so often. I had the virtual minimum which was rejected.

I have thought about brokers that do not reject a trade but it is uncertain. I am not too bothered about trade rejections but if they do not send a trade rejection message, it is risky to trade. You wonder what happened to that trade. Suppose you trade again and find the other suddenly pops up. So you will have twice the size instead so it messes with your risk strategy.

Yes I understand you feel that you have missed a great opportunity, still this is a part of trading with market makers. It is probably not the case that the broker did deny execution because you you were on the right side of the trade, in fact you or they don't know in advance it is going to be a major move.

I have not experienced it to be a big problem, worring about a "rejected" trade without an error message suddenly being executed, it certainly has happened for me, but not a long time after the actual event of clicking on buy.

 

[twinj]

Hi gle101, so how long would you say you would wait until you are pretty sure that the trade you intended will not be executed? Is it 10 seconds, 1 minute?

 

[gle101]

Hi gle101, so how long would you say you would wait until you are pretty sure that the trade you intended will not be executed? Is it 10 seconds, 1 minute?

Very seldom, if ever I have had it to pop up after 1 minute. I think it might have happened once during a news release giving me a 100 point slippage, although I got that trade reversed by the broker after I contacted them about the delayed execution and slippage.

 

[highbury fx]

Hi gle101, so how long would you say you would wait until you are pretty sure that the trade you intended will not be executed? Is it 10 seconds, 1 minute?

don't mean to jump in on a question you asked gle101, but from my experience on the other side of the price to you, unless you are an A book client or are dealing over figures or are waiting for an order to be filled over figures, your response time from trade request to trade confo should be instant.

there will be an accepted tolerance from the live price that the broker will accept trades on. If the price is moving quickly you may fall outside of the tolerance, if that's the case you should be rejected instantly, if the price you're trying to deal on is within tolerance, you should be accepted immediately. To put this in to context, the tolerance is normally at least equal to the spread (for example if you're trying to buy at 18 on a 16-18 price, you should be done if the live offer is 20 or below.)

stop loss and limit orders triggered over figures that have caused a decent move may take longer than immediately to fill as the desk will need to see where the market first paused for fill levels, and they will need to do this over 4 pairs before anything else (usually EUR/USD, GBP/USD, and the respective ccy cross of the data being released)

 

[gle101]

don't mean to jump in on a question you asked gle101, but from my experience on the other side of the price to you, unless you are an A book client or are dealing over figures or are waiting for an order to be filled over figures, your response time from trade request to trade confo should be instant.

there will be an accepted tolerance from the live price that the broker will accept trades on. If the price is moving quickly you may fall outside of the tolerance, if that's the case you should be rejected instantly, if the price you're trying to deal on is within tolerance, you should be accepted immediately. To put this in to context, the tolerance is normally at least equal to the spread (for example if you're trying to buy at 18 on a 16-18 price, you should be done if the live offer is 20 or below.)

stop loss and limit orders triggered over figures that have caused a decent move may take longer than immediately to fill as the desk will need to see where the market first paused for fill levels, and they will need to do this over 4 pairs before anything else (usually EUR/USD, GBP/USD, and the respective ccy cross of the data being released)

This is absolutely correct, but the problem is that some market makers set the internal deviation too tight at some instruments, resulting it giving too many rejections or re-quotes. This is especially true if they use "made up" fractions of a point in quotes. In fact at some brokers, a few instruments will be almost impossible to trade if the market is extremely volatile.

 

[twinj]

The compliance team has eight weeks to respond.

 

[twinj]

Hi gle101,

you mentioned that you have experienced getting no trade rejection message when you should have got one. My experience is on London Capital Group's white labels. Could you possibly tell me where you experienced them? Thanks.

 

[gle101]

Hi gle101,

you mentioned that you have experienced getting no trade rejection message when you should have got one. My experience is on London Capital Group's white labels. Could you possibly tell me where you experienced them? Thanks.

This happens with almost all brokers but not often, if you are a short term trader with many trades you will notice it more frequently. This is just a fact and do not bother me at all, however I have tried to avoid the ones that is giving too many trade rejections overall, as it disturbe my trading rythm. This problem is also assosiated with very tight spread and high volatility, you are bound to get more trade rejections during these market conditions. It also depends what kind of execution policy the broker adopts, internal deviation, instrument in question, you own computer and not to forget to mention your broadband connection.

I would suggest you try another broker, there are plenty around to choose from, a general suggestion is not possible as it depends on so many factors. However according to my experience Oanda, ActivTrades and DF markets are both good ones in this regard. I also trade with brokers that are not so good but they exel in other areas.

 

[dealer911]

Hi guys,
A certain spread betting company I have used for a few years has disappointed me recently.

On 16th December, I entered a long trade on the DAX at 9220. There was no trade rejection message so I thought it was accepted. But looking at my open positions, I could not find the trade. I did not open another trade because since I did not get a trade rejection message, the attempt may be still pending. I contacted my account manager to find out. After a few hours he tells me it was a trade rejection after all. I am in the middle of asking why there was such a platform irregularity.

The whole thing is made worse by the fact that the DAX went to 9700 on that day.

I am not complaining about the trade rejection because it comes with the territory. Why did I not receive a trade rejection message? If I had got the message, I would have had the chance to try again without affecting my risk strategy.

Has anyone experienced these platform irregularities or anything else?

Hi there - what was the low on that day ? did it actually trade at 9220 ?
sorry I would check but i'm not in front of my screen

 

[twinj]

It was very close to the low. I had been tracking the long for a week or so.

Thanks for the comment dealer911. Have you had a similar problem with a platform not giving a trade rejection message when they should have done?

 

[twinj]

Thanks for comment highbury. They have told me about these tolerances and I accept trade rejections as long as they tell me my trade has been rejected in a message. Then I can regroup and try again.

 

[twinj]

Thanks for comment gle101. These days, I like to wait for a good opportunity. I suppose if I am trading frequently as in 100 trades a day, this sort of thing could be ignored.

My money is sort of stuck because of the bonus criteria. I have made a certain number of trades and that would be wasted if I leave.