Slippage

In practice

You place a market buy on EUR/USD when the screen shows 1.1050, but NFP prints seconds later and your fill arrives at 1.1065 — 15 pips of slippage. On a stop loss the same effect cuts the other way: a stop at 1.1030 fills at 1.1018 during a flash spike.

Why it matters for traders

Slippage is the gap between a strategy tested at one price and the reality of being filled at another, and it is where many edge-positive plans quietly bleed. Avoiding market orders around high-impact news, or using guaranteed stops where offered, is how traders keep their real risk close to the risk they planned.

Common pitfall

The pitfall is entering market orders around scheduled high-impact news, when spreads widen and fills jump. Traders plan a perfect entry and ignore that the fill will be nothing like the price they saw. Avoid market orders within minutes of major releases, use limit orders with a buffer for entries, and understand that stops can suffer the same slippage — the only true protection is reduced size or a guaranteed stop where offered.

Putting it in context

Cost and leverage terms like this one matter more to your long-term results than most entries or indicators ever will. Two traders taking identical trades can end the year with very different accounts purely because of spread, swap, commission, and position size. The habit to build is computing the full cost of a trade before entering it — not just the stop-loss distance, but every charge the broker applies between open and close. On a demo account these costs feel invisible; on a live account, over hundreds of trades, they decide whether an otherwise sound strategy is profitable. Revisit your broker's actual charges every few months, because advertised headline figures rarely reflect what an average retail trade really pays.

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