Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
Major forex brokerage FXCM disclosed spread and slippage statistics on Wednesday, according to which 31.55% of all orders received positive slippage in the period from January 1, 2017 through May 31, 2017. In addition, according to the broker’s spreads report for Q1 of 2017, the average spread on EUR/USD amounted to 0.2 pips.
Slippage can occur for many reasons, but price volatility appears to be the largest contributor. With FXCM’s forex execution models, its clients can potentially receive price improvements on all orders if the market spikes favorably, as all orders fill with the broker’s best available price.
Here are the highlights from FXCM’s slippage statistics, covering the period from January 1, 2017 through May 31, 2017:
– 57.25% of all orders had NO SLIPPAGE.
– 31.55% of all orders received positive slippage.
– 11.21% of all orders received negative slippage.
The broker recommends its clients to open and close trades using limit and limit entry orders, which guarantees their requested price or better without negative slippage. You can see FXCM’s full slippage report here.
The data in the broker’s Spreads report, on the other hand, covers the three months ended on March 31, 2017. According to the report, the average spread on EUR/USD for this period amounted to 0.2 pips. The information is derived from real, tradeable spreads available to FXCM clients with Standard accounts within peak hours. The broker states that 70% of EUR/USD trades occurred during such hours (the period from 0600 – 1800 GMT).
As the cost of trading with FXCM also includes commission fees, the broker also provided data on trading costs. In Q1 of 2017 average trading costs amounted to £8 round‐turn commission for a standard lot of 100 000 currency base units during peak hours. You can see the full spreads report here.
FXCM Group is the holding company of the FXCM group of companies. It operates via several subsidiaries, including UK-licensed Forex Capital Markets Ltd. and Australia-regulated FXCM Australia Pty. Ltd. The company is majority owned by Global Brokerage Inc., which until recently was known as FXCM Inc., and 49.9% owned by US lender Leucadia National Corp.
