That Thursday when my limit order filled 30 cents above the ask price...

I always thought brokers were all the same until that one bad fill cost me $150 on a single trade, which made me switch to a direct market access broker and suddenly my orders were actually hitting the price I set.

2 comments

2 Comments

lucas_price8315d ago

Wait, has anyone actually checked if the broker's network routing was to blame instead of just the order type? I had this exact same thing happen with a limit order that filled way off market and after digging into it I found out my broker was sending orders through some third party routing firm that would price improve themselves and pocket the difference. It wasn't the execution algo or slippage, it was basically legalized frontrunning by the routing provider. Took me three weeks of arguing with support to get them to admit it.

thea_knight14d ago

Oh yeah this is a real thing and nobody talks about it enough lol. I had a similar situation where my fills were consistently garbage on a broker that claimed "smart routing" and it turned out they were just sending everything to one sketchy wholesaler that paid them for the flow. Took forever to get them to even explain how their routing worked, let alone admit they were screwing me on purpose.