Requote

A requote is a broker’s rejection of a requested order price, paired with an offer to execute at a different rate. The trader sees the new price and must immediately choose: accept the revised quote and execute, or cancel the order entirely. It’s not quite a fill, and it’s not quite a rejection—it’s a forced negotiation that favours the house.

Why requotes happen

In FX, the bid-ask spread constantly adjusts based on market liquidity and volatility. When a trader sends a limit order or a market order during a quiet period, the broker’s internal pricing is solid. But if the market moves sharply between the moment the order is submitted and the moment the broker’s backend tries to execute it—even a difference of milliseconds—the price the trader requested may no longer be available.

Requotes are more common during news releases, when the FX session overlap creates sudden price swings, or when a trader is working with a weekend gap and the open is chaotic. In these conditions, liquidity dries up, spreads widen, and the exact price a trader clicked on becomes obsolete almost instantly.

A less scrupulous broker may also issue a requote strategically: if the trader’s order is profitable to the house, fill it instantly; if it’s not, requote to the trader’s disadvantage and hope they cancel instead of accepting. Regulatory scrutiny has improved this behaviour in major markets, but requotes remain a sign that either genuine liquidity pressure exists or the broker is exercising discretion.

The trader’s dilemma

When a requote lands, the trader has seconds to decide. The new price might be only one or two pips worse than what was requested—a minor inconvenience. Or it might be five, ten, or fifty pips away, turning the proposed trade unprofitable or reversing expected return entirely. Many traders, facing a requote on a trade they wanted to take, accept the worse price just to get into the market; the requote has effectively shifted the risk cost to the trader.

Others cancel and re-submit, hoping the next attempt lands at the original price. But this tactic burns time, and in a moving market, re-submission often brings another requote at an even worse level. The net effect is that the trader ends up executing at a worse price than if they’d accepted the first requote, or misses the trade entirely.

Requotes and broker opacity

Requotes are a flashpoint in discussions of forex broker quality. A broker that requotes every fifth order, or that requotes only when the trade would be profitable to the trader, reveals poor execution standards or outright manipulation. Transparent brokers publish their requote rates and conditions; opaque ones don’t.

The best brokers—those connected directly to interbank markets or major institutional LPs—rarely requote, because they’re drawing live prices from multiple sources and have hedging in place. A broker sitting between the trader and liquidity, with no upstream hedge, will requote more often when market conditions tighten.

Regulatory and technical context

In regulated environments like the US or UK, brokers must justify requotes and cannot arbitrarily use them to profit at the trader’s expense. However, the FX markets still operate in a largely decentralized manner, and many brokers operate offshore or in less-regulated zones, where requote practices can be more aggressive.

Modern technology has reduced requotes in legitimate operations. Direct market access (DMA) systems and algorithmic trading platforms execute instantly, without the human “check before fill” delays that create requote windows. But retail FX brokers typically use dealing desks that do involve manual pricing, and those dealing desks are where requotes originate.

The broader cost

Requotes are invisible transaction costs. They don’t appear as commissions; they’re absorbed into the spread on any single fill. But over a trading career, requotes compound: a 2-pip requote on 100 trades is 200 pips of unnecessary cost, equivalent to a substantial commission on a typical account. Traders focused on reducing costs should pay attention to their broker’s requote frequency and, if it’s high, consider switching.

See also