Spread

Quoted 1.0850 / 1.0851, EURUSD has a 1 pip spread. You buy at the ask and sell at the bid, so a long position is down by the spread the instant it fills. On one standard lot, where a pip is $10 ([CMC Markets](https://www.cmcmarkets.com/en/forex/forex-lot-sizes)), that 1 pip spread is $10 of cost before price has moved at all. You pay it on every trade, whether the trade works or not. Two mechanics make it bite harder than the arithmetic suggests. **Your chart plots the bid, but half your orders trigger off the ask.** MetaTrader's own forum spells it out: a buy's stop loss and take profit trigger when the *bid* reaches them, while a sell's stop loss and take profit trigger when the *ask* reaches them ([MQL5 forum](https://www.mql5.com/en/forum/439138)). So on a short, a widening spread lifts the ask into your stop while the candle you are staring at, which is drawn from the bid, never touches the level. That mechanic is one explanation for the "I got stopped out and price never even got there" experience. It is also a reason a stop parked exactly on a level is fragile. Note that the system's own rule is separate and stricter: your stop must cover protected structure by 2 pips because a sweep should run the stops resting at the level and not yours, and because anything tighter gets clipped by ordinary noise. **The spread is variable, and it widens precisely when you least want it to.** It tracks liquidity, so it stretches around the 5pm New York rollover, at the Sunday open, and around high-impact data when liquidity providers pull their quotes. [NordFX](https://nordfx.com/how-trading-works/stop-loss-triggered-low-liquidity-market-open) makes the underlying point well: the market does not move tick by tick, and when no orders exist at certain levels, price skips them. Your fill lands past your level even though the chart looks perfectly smooth. Account type only moves the cost around. It never removes it. - **Standard accounts** charge no commission and bury the broker's markup inside a wider spread. - **ECN or raw accounts** quote a near-interbank spread and charge an explicit commission, once on the open and again on the close. Compare them honestly: (spread in pips x pip value) + commission, per round turn. And if your backtest assumed a fixed tight spread, run it again with a realistic one. Costs weigh heaviest on short-stop, tight-target trades, which is exactly where a setup sitting near the 1.7 RR floor lives.