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Execution and order types on the Pro Account via MetaTrader 4

Thank you for choosing to open a live trading account with Alpari (UK) Ltd, one of the fastest-growing providers of online Forex trading services, serving retail and institutional investors.

 

Market Execution

There are three types of execution on MetaTrader 4: Instant, Market and Request. On the Micro and Classic accounts all orders are processed by Instant or Request execution. On a Pro account all orders are processed by Market Execution.

A Market Execution order is the fastest type of execution and is the only type of order that ensures no re-quoting.

Alpari hedges your trades with more than 10 top-tier banks that stream their tradable prices onto our platforms. We receive thousands of quotes per second from our liquidity providers and it is not practical to send all these quotes to our clients as it would generate substantial traffic. Therefore, the prices you see on your MetaTrader Pro Account are market snapshots.

Unlike Alpari Direct Pro (powered by Currenex), MetaTrader 4 cannot show you depth of the market, thus Alpari (UK) only stream the best Bid and Offer to its clients. In addition to this, each quote from a bank or ECN also specifies the maximum volume that is tradable at a given price. If you decide to open or close a position, your order will be executed at the best price available on the market directly from our liquidity providers. Sometimes this price may differ from a price you see on the platform, for two primary reasons:

• The current market price may have changed since the last market snapshot;
• Your desired trade volume may be larger than the best tradable Bid / Offer we stream via MT4.

If you wish to guarantee the execution price, please use Buy Limit or Sell Limit orders to enter the market.

 

Opening a position

To open a position, double click on a currency pair in the Market Watch window or press F9 (you can also use Tools/New Order or right click in the Market watch window or on the Trade tab in the Terminal window). You will see the Order window where you can place your order. Select volume and Market Execution in the “Type” drop down list.

In the Order window you will not be able to set Stop Loss and Take Profit as this is a Market Order (Stop Loss and Take Profit boxes are not active).

New Order on Pro Account:

*Please note that the message: ‘Notice! At order by market execution, the price will be quoted by dealer’ is a generic message generated by MetaTrader. It does not apply to the Non-Dealing Desk Pro account and should be ignored.

New Order on Micro or Classic (Instant Execution)

As you can see, when an order is executed by the Market Execution (New Order on Pro Account image) there is no maximum deviation box and the stop loss and take profit fields are greyed out. If you trade with an EA you may need to make some changes to its coding as it will not be able to place a Stop Loss and/or Take Profit orders whilst opening a position.

 

Modify an Order

To modify an order you need to right click on it in the Trade tab and select Modify or Close order. The Modify or Close order window will pop up and you will need to select Modify Order in the “Type” box.

This is how the modify window looks like on a Pro Account:

There are no restrictions on how far away you can place your orders (it says that SL and TP must differ for 0 pips). This means that you can place orders inside the spread. Compare this with Micro or Classic account below:

 

Close an Order

To close an order you need to right click on active trade in the Trade tab and select Modify or Close order. Modify or close order window will pop up and you will need to select Market Execution in the “Type” box. You will see the Close button underneath Sell and Buy.

This is how the close order window looks like on a Pro Account:

Again, there is no maximum deviation box as on Micro and Classic accounts:

 

Stop Loss, Buy Stop, Sell Stop

As was mentioned above, we receive thousands of prices from our liquidity providers and to prevent the system from overloading on the client side, we send market ‘snapshots’ rather than all tradable quotes. To ensure that you receive the best Bid and Ask prices available on the market from our liquidity providers, we recalculate best Bid / Ask prices in real time. The quotes that you see therefore are indicative.

Your Stop Loss, Buy Stop or Sell Stop order will be executed when the best Bid or Ask (depending on order direction) hits your order level. Please note that if this happens between market snapshots, the best Bid/Ask will not appear on your chart as the price will not have been sent via the client terminal.

If there is enough liquidity to hedge your trade, under both normal and abnormal market conditions, we try to execute your stop order at the order level. In the event that there is not enough liquidity to hedge your order at the specified level, it will be executed at the best price available for your transaction size. Effectively, your stop order becomes a market order and may be executed at a price that differs from the order level.

For Stop Loss, Buy Stop and Sell Stop orders partial fills are possible.

 

Take Profit, Buy Limit, Sell Limit

Take Profit, Buy Limit and Sell Limit will be executed when the best Bid or Ask (depending on order direction) reaches your order level. Again, this may happen between market snapshots and thus the best Bid/Ask will not appear on your chart.

If there is enough liquidity to hedge your order it will be fully executed at the price you specify. If there is not enough liquidity for the entire volume of your order, we will execute as much as we can hedge with our liquidity providers, with the remaining amount awaiting execution in the market. Partial fills are also possible to these order types.

 

Trade without spread: place orders inside the spread

If you have a Pro Account on MetaTrader 4 you can place orders inside the spread which will allow you to be filled at a more advantageous price. See example below:

On MetaTrader 4 Micro and Classic accounts if you try to place the order inside the spread, your will get an “Invalid S/L or T/P” error as shown below.

Trying to place an order inside the spread:

“Invalid S/L or T/P” error:

Once you have placed a Buy Limit order you will see a confirmation with the ticket number. The accepted Buy Limit order, in our example, is now a market order waiting to be executed at the limit price or higher.

Placing a Buy Limit order inside the spread:

Receiving confirmation that the order has been accepted:

 

Spreads from 0 pips

Opening a Pro account will give you direct access to the deep liquidity of more than 10 top-tier banks which are competing to offer you the best price. It is possible that the best Bid provided by Bank 1 will be equal to the best Ask provided by Bank 2. In this case, you are likely to see zero spreads in MetaTrader 4.