Discussion of article "Bid/Ask spread analysis in MetaTrader 5"

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New article Bid/Ask spread analysis in MetaTrader 5 has been published:

An indicator to report your brokers Bid/Ask spread levels. Now we can use MT5s tick data to analyze what the historic true average Bid/Ask spread actually have recently been. You shouldn't need to look at the current spread because that is available if you show both bid and ask price lines.

Looking at these charts, you can see that this broker says that most of the spreads are 5 points.

If that was the case then it should cost you 1 pip for the round trip of opening and closing a trade.

So, for a trade with a 1/1 reward risk ratio with a Stop Loss of 10pips and Take Profit of 10pips, it should cost you 10% of your risk/stake.

BAS-EURUSD-M30

But, the actual average spreads, the red line, versus the brokers documented spread, (black dashed line) are mostly twice as large as the declared spread as confirmed by the data window below. Using the earlier example with the same SL & TP, the cost to you is normally at least 2pips or 20%. 

Author: Paul Kelly

 

Hi, an interesting and informative article,

I enjoyed the advice tip about manually taking profit, as opposed to setting it. As a newbee trader I have found if you can catch

the initial spikes, you can increase your profits in scalping. Also enjoyed the spread advice. At a previous "flashy" broker

I kept checking my properties display on my graph,  as I cound'nt find the [show] ask price line.

Thats how far apart the spread lines were. lol.

Thanks

Stuart.

 
Perfect 
 

Very helpful article.

I am trying to see the actual spread applied on each of the trades!  I have realized that on a standard account, you end up paying up to 40% of your profit in the spreads.  Even on ECN account, when you add the commission and the spread, you pay more than 20% of your profits.  Brokers really fleece when they just state that spreads are 'floating'.  On XAUUSD, they can float from as low as 9 to as high as 25! 

 
The indicator plots bar spreads and average tick spreads, but bar spread means obviously nothing in the age of floating spread , it's a ruin from antic times. Also the so called standard EURUSD spread is wrongly computed. it should be EURUSD rate * tick size (point) * number of ticks, not the reverse. It would be also more straighforward and probably faster to get ticks  once for past bars.
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