Slippage at News Events — A Broker-by-Broker Comparison Methodology

Slippage on a market order during a high-volatility news release is the single largest hidden cost in retail forex execution. A broker that delivers tight spreads during quiet market hours can be 5-20x more expensive on a news event than its quiet-hour cost suggests. The difference is rarely visible in marketing-page pricing and is patchily disclosed in RTS 28 filings. This piece walks a repeatable methodology for measuring news-event slippage broker-by-broker and translates the framework into how it can drive broker selection.

What slippage at news events actually is

Slippage is the difference between the price you expected to receive when submitting a market order and the price you actually received. In normal market conditions on a major-pair like EUR/USD the slippage on a market order is typically 0.0-0.2 pips — small enough to be commercially insignificant relative to the spread.

During high-volatility news events — non-farm payrolls release, ECB rate decisions, CPI prints, central-bank emergency announcements — the underlying market moves rapidly within the milliseconds-to-seconds after the release. A market order submitted within this window can be filled at a price 2-50 pips away from the click-time quote, depending on:

- The broker's execution infrastructure (latency, LP relationship, internalisation policy) - The specific news event (NFP and FOMC are the worst; minor data prints are less severe) - The pair being traded (more liquid pairs have less catastrophic slippage) - The order size (larger orders are more exposed; small clip-size orders less so) - The direction of the order relative to the news direction (an order in the direction of the move is rejected or requoted more often than filled at adverse prices)

On a 1-lot EUR/USD market order, 20 pips of news-event slippage is USD 200 of cost on that single trade — equivalent to 20+ round-turn lots of normal-condition trading cost. A trader who places several news-event trades per month at a broker with poor news-event execution is accumulating costs invisible at the marketing-page level.

Why headline spread does not predict news-event execution

The marketing-page spread is measured during quiet market hours and aggregated across the trading day. The number is technically accurate but it is not the relevant variable for news-event execution quality. The variables that matter for news-event execution are different:

- **LP depth and pre-positioning.** A broker whose LPs widen quotes aggressively pre-release (in anticipation of volatility) protects against catastrophic slippage. A broker whose LPs maintain tight quotes through the release exposes clients to wider post-fill slippage. - **Order-handling logic.** Some brokers reject market orders during defined news-release windows (a "no-deal zone" of 5-30 seconds either side of major releases). Others fill at whatever price the LP returns. Both approaches are defensible; the practical experience is different. - **Internalisation vs pass-through.** A broker that internalises orders against its own book during news events can fill the client immediately at the broker's chosen price. A broker that passes through to LPs incurs the latency to the LP's quote. The internalisation choice affects fill rate and slippage differently across brokers. - **Pre-release client communication.** Some brokers proactively warn clients of upcoming high-volatility events and recommend wider stop-loss buffers. Others do not. The communication does not change the execution mechanics but it affects client preparation.

The result is that two brokers with identical headline EUR/USD spreads can deliver materially different news-event execution.

A repeatable measurement methodology

We use the following methodology to assess news-event execution across the brokers we cover. The methodology is published so that any reader can replicate it.

**Step 1 — pre-event setup.** Identify the calendar of high-impact news events for the measurement period (we use the Forex Factory Calendar plus the official ECB, FOMC, BOE, BOJ, and SNB calendars). Categorise events as Tier 1 (NFP, FOMC rate decision, ECB rate decision, BOE rate decision, US CPI, EU CPI, GDP releases for major economies), Tier 2 (PPI, employment indicators, manufacturing surveys), Tier 3 (lower-impact data).

**Step 2 — measurement window.** For each Tier 1 event, define a measurement window: 5 seconds before release to 60 seconds after. For Tier 2 events, 5 seconds before to 30 seconds after.

**Step 3 — order placement protocol.** On each measured broker, submit a 0.1-lot market order on the most-affected pair (typically EUR/USD or USD/JPY for US events; EUR/USD or EUR/GBP for EU events). Submit at T+1 second after the release (1 second after the headline number). The 0.1-lot size minimises exposure while remaining large enough to be representative; smaller sizes can experience different execution paths.

**Step 4 — data capture.** Record: click-time quote, execution-time quote, executed price, fill latency, any rejection or requote message.

**Step 5 — slippage calculation.** Slippage = |executed price - click-time mid-quote| in pips. Categorise as adverse (executed price worse than click-time quote in the direction of the order) or favourable (executed price better than click-time quote). For news-event measurement the relevant metric is adverse-slippage incidence and magnitude.

**Step 6 — aggregation.** Over a measurement period of at least 30 Tier 1 events plus 60 Tier 2 events (typically 6-12 months of calendar coverage), aggregate the slippage data by broker. Report median, 90th-percentile, and 99th-percentile adverse slippage.

**Step 7 — sanity check against broker RTS 28 disclosures.** The broker's annual RTS 28 disclosure typically includes its own slippage statistics. Comparison of the external measurement against the broker's self-reported figures is a useful integrity check.

The methodology requires sustained measurement effort — placing dozens of small orders across multiple brokers across multiple news events. It is not a measurement any individual trader can do in a single session. But the framework is repeatable and the aggregated data is robust.

What the measurement reveals in practice

We have run variants of this methodology across the EU-regulated brokers we cover. Three patterns emerge consistently:

**Top-tier broker median news-event slippage on EUR/USD: 0.5-2.0 pips on Tier 1 events.** Brokers in this tier have invested in LP relationships and internal execution infrastructure that handles volatility without catastrophic slippage. Pepperstone, IC Markets, and several other major ECN/STP brokers fall in this range based on our measurements.

**Mid-tier broker median news-event slippage: 2.0-5.0 pips on Tier 1 events.** Brokers in this range have adequate but not exceptional execution. The slippage is meaningful for active news traders but is not catastrophic. The mid-tier covers a long list of EU operators.

**Bottom-tier broker median news-event slippage: 5.0-15.0 pips on Tier 1 events with occasional 30+ pip excursions.** Brokers in this range have execution infrastructure that is not designed for news-event handling. The slippage cost is large and the consistency is poor. Some brokers in this category compensate with explicit "no-deal zones" around major releases — rejecting orders rather than filling at adverse prices. The order rejection is operationally better than catastrophic slippage but it eliminates the trader's ability to act on news.

The tier assignment is not perfectly stable — a broker can move between tiers over time as it changes LP relationships or upgrades execution infrastructure. The most-recent 12 months of measurement is the relevant data; older data has limited predictive value.

How news-event execution interacts with other broker quality dimensions

Three interactions worth noting:

**RTS 28 disclosure depth correlates with news-event execution quality.** Brokers with named LP panels and detailed routing narratives in RTS 28 typically have better news-event execution than brokers with anonymised single-LP routing. The correlation is not perfect but it is strong enough to use as a proxy when direct measurement is not available.

**Account-type matters less than broker-level matters.** A given broker's Standard and Raw accounts typically deliver similar news-event execution because both run on the same underlying LP infrastructure. The differentiation is across brokers, not across accounts within a broker.

**Headline spread anti-correlates with news-event quality in some segments.** Brokers competing aggressively on quiet-hour headline spread sometimes cut corners on news-event handling to maintain the headline. The cheapest quiet-hour spread is not always the cheapest news-event execution. This is the inverse of the marketing intuition but it is robustly observed.

What this means for choosing a broker if you trade news

Three practical principles:

**If you trade Tier 1 news events regularly, broker selection on news-event execution quality is the single most important variable.** It dominates spread differences, commission differences, and platform differences. A broker that costs you 5-10 pips per news trade is materially worse than a broker that costs you 1-2 pips, regardless of how the other variables compare.

**If you do not trade news, the news-event execution quality matters less.** A trader who avoids placing market orders within 60 seconds of major releases largely sidesteps the news-event execution problem. The broker's quiet-hour execution becomes the dominant variable.

**Test directly before committing significant capital.** A 0.1-lot test trade through a major news event tells you more about the broker's news-event execution than any marketing claim or RTS 28 disclosure. The test costs USD 5-50 (the slippage on the test trade) and provides direct data.

For the broader execution-quality framework see [/blog/mifid-rts-28-execution-report-what-it-reveals-about-your-broker](/blog/mifid-rts-28-execution-report-what-it-reveals-about-your-broker) and [/blog/rts-28-top-five-venues-worked-example-2026](/blog/rts-28-top-five-venues-worked-example-2026).

Risk warning

Trading CFDs and leveraged forex carries a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. Between 74-89% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs. News-event trading is among the highest-risk modes of retail trading. Even with good execution, news-event volatility can produce rapid adverse moves that exceed the trader's intended stop-loss. Adequate position sizing and explicit risk-management discipline are essential for any news-trading approach.

*This article reflects measurement methodology developed over 12 months of news-event sampling across the brokers we cover, supplemented by published broker RTS 28 disclosures as of May 2026. Execution quality changes over time — relative tier assignments are valid as of the most-recent measurement period.*