Alpari MT4 trade went past my profit target without triggering

[julianj]

I have had a successful trade on the EUR/USD, which I am pleased about.

It fell 72 pips and went right through my target of 1.39127 by one pip (actually 0.8 pip) and then retraced, I'd brought my stop down and I won 39 pips but I thought it had gone beyond the target, though it was very brief. When I checked after the trade was closed I was right.

I've heard of this sort of thing. Does it happen often, forum members - has it happened to you? It is pretty irritating.

thanks

Julian

[raa]

It does happen, though usually during news time, when price gaps. Are you sure you calculated in a spread, when you close a short position you are actually going long, so price need to go below your target by x number of pips, where x = current spread. Alpari has floating spreads. On a micro account usually minimal spread on EURUSD is 1.6 pips, so in your first example the bid price never hit is and you need a bid price to close a short order.

[raa]

PS congrats with a good trade!

[julianj]

Thanks mate, that explains it, I nearly manually closed it when it seemed to bottom out but I didn't. Sticking to the plan and all that :-).

Now I'm aware of this I will factor it in from now on.

Julian