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is not indicative of future performance or success.
There is a substantial risk of loss in trading. You should therefore carefully consider
whether such trading is suitable for you in light of your financial condition. You should read,
understand, and consider the Risk Disclosure Statement that is provided by your broker
before you consider trading. Most people who trade lose money.
The lowest volume in the forex market (which usually leads to wider spreads and more erratic price moves and spikes) is seen after the close of the New York session (22:00 GMT), those two hours before Tokyo opens.
I got slipped by 16 pips on my trade on Collective2 at the New York close, January 28, which is considerable given that forex brokers usually compete by offering spreads as low as 1 pip, sometimes even less.
Naturally I take full responsibility for that. I was scheduled to modify my target to avoid that pitfall but I had a schedule mishap.
Collective 2 somewhat indirectly provide the standard option of cancelling a trade at the end of the day, but it would be even better if they could impose a cutoff between 22:00 GMT and 23:00 GMT as most professional Forex brokers do rightfully so to help traders avoid the erratic spreads during that time.
Such a cutoff would prevent trades from happening even if the target is reached during that time.
I’m kind of dropping this as a suggestion in the suggestion box for the C2 platform continuous development.
Note that, unlike some professional brokers as mentioned above, unethical Forex brokers use that time to enlarge spreads by 50 or even 100+ just to wipe out clients.
Therefore spreads between 22 and 23 GMT can be used as a test to spot unethical brokers.
You can close all positions at the end of the day and even select the exact time via the C2 “Auto-Close Positions at End of Day” feature, as described below:
“If you want to close out a position at the end of the day, we encourage you to explicitly enter a trade signal. However, you can also specify a “fail-safe” time for each day, at which time specific open positions in your system will be closed at the market price. This is especially useful for systems where a 3rd-party application such as NinjaTrader or TradeStation generates signals for you - and you want to be sure that you are flat at the end of the day. Please specify all times as Eastern USA time (New York City), using a 24-hour clock, in HH:MM format.”
And yes, Forex spreads at and after 5 PM (New York time) can exceed 30 or even 40 pips, especially on the GBP crosses.
Regarding your last remark, what conclusion would you draw if at a determined date at that erratic time some brokers have a 12 pips spread whereas another has a 50 pip spread?
The conclusion is simple: stick with the low spread FX broker.
Or better yet, don’t trade during the dead-zone session (5PM to 6PM, NY time), unless you are already sitting on a huge winning position and your stop is out of reach for your greedy broker…
