What is a requote and how is it different from slippage?

You click "Buy" on EUR/USD at 1.0850, and instead of an open position you see a pop-up window with a new price of 1.0853 and two buttons: accept or reject. The rate ran away in a fraction of a second between your click and the moment the order reached the broker. This is a requote — the broker did not fill the order at the price you chose, and instead sends a fresh quote for you to accept. Below I explain how the mechanism works, why it is not the same thing as slippage, and what you can do to limit it.

What a requote actually is

A requote is the broker's response when the price you saw on screen stopped being current before your order was filled. In a model where the broker quotes you a fixed bid and ask, it carries the risk that the market moves in the time it takes to send and process the order. If that move is large enough that the broker no longer wants to deal at the original price, it declines to fill and sends back a new rate. The order is not rejected for good — it is held pending and waits for your decision.

The crucial word is "waits". You get the question "do you accept the new price?", and the clock is ticking. The new quote is valid for a few seconds only; if you do not click in that window, a message appears saying the price changed again, and the whole procedure starts over. In the MetaTrader documentation a requote is in fact a separate, formally defined order result — the server returns a specific code meaning requote, different from the code for a plain rejection. It is not a platform bug or a connection glitch, but a designed part of the execution mechanics.

A requote and slippage are not the same thing

This distinction is the single most important point in the whole topic, because the two phenomena look alike — in both the fill price differs from the one you saw — yet they work in completely different ways. With slippage, the difference between the expected price and the fill price (the slippage glossary entry on forexmechanics.com sets out the term in detail), the order is filled automatically. The broker does not ask for your consent; it opens the position at the nearest available price, which is sometimes worse and occasionally even better than expected. The decision is made without you and in the same instant.

With a requote it is the other way round: the order is not filled at all. Instead of a position you get a question and an obligation to decide within a few seconds. In practice the difference comes down to two things. First, slippage gives you certainty of entry, even at a worse price, while a requote takes that certainty away — you can reject the quote and end up out of the market. Second, a requote costs you time: those few seconds to accept can be priceless when the market is moving sharply and every moment shifts the price by another few points.

"The short-term trader's worst enemy is not a bad forecast but the cost of execution that never shows up on the chart." — Kathy Lien, Day Trading and Swing Trading the Currency Market, Wiley, 2016.

Where and when a requote shows up

A requote is typical of the instant execution model, used mainly by market maker brokers. That is precisely where the broker quotes a fixed price and can decline to honour it when the market runs away. In the market execution model, characteristic of ECN and STP brokers, a requote in principle does not occur — the broker does not promise a fixed price but routes the order for filling at the best price available from liquidity providers. With no fixed price to accept, there is nothing to requote; slippage appears instead. Different order types react to this differently, but the execution model itself is the decisive factor here.

As for timing — a requote intensifies wherever the price moves fastest and liquidity is thinnest. That means above all the seconds around major macro releases, such as the US labour market report or a central bank decision, as well as the market open after the weekend and periods of elevated volatility. The longer the order execution time at a given broker, the greater the chance that the price moves within that window and the order comes back as a requote. This is one reason why the quality and speed of execution can matter more than the spread alone.

What it looks like in a concrete example

Take an illustrative example. Anna trades on an instant execution account at a market maker broker and wants to buy one lot of EUR/USD in the minute the US labour market report is released. On screen she sees a buy price of 1.0850 and clicks. Within half a second, before the order is even processed, the data comes in far better than forecast and the rate jumps to 1.0853. The broker does not want to deal at the old price and sends Anna a requote at 1.0853. The position did not open — Anna stares at a window with a counting-down clock and has three seconds to decide whether she accepts a price three points worse, or rejects it and tries again, risking another requote.

Had Anna been trading on an ECN account in market execution mode, the scenario would look different: the order would fill automatically at 1.0853, and the difference would be booked as slippage. The financial outcome can be similar, but the experience is entirely different — in one case Anna makes a decision under time pressure, in the other she simply has an open position already and can get on with managing risk instead of clicking on pop-up windows.

What to do tomorrow

1. Check which execution mode your account runs on. Open the account specification at your broker or the symbol properties in the platform and find the "execution type" entry. If you see "instant execution", you are exposed to requotes; if it says "market execution", you will meet slippage instead. That one piece of information immediately tells you what to expect when you enter a position.
2. Set a maximum price deviation in the order window. In MetaTrader tick "maximum deviation from quoted price" and enter, say, two or three points. You are telling the platform you accept a slightly worse price instead of a requote window — deliberately trading the risk of a pending order for a limited, known-in-advance amount of slippage.
3. Do not enter a position in the second a major release lands. Look at the economic calendar and mark the hours of the labour market report and central bank decisions. If you are not deliberately trading the news, wait a few minutes until liquidity returns and the spread narrows — the risk of both requotes and slippage drops noticeably then.
4. Review your recent requote history for asymmetry. Open your trading journal and check whether requotes mostly land on orders that were about to enter at a profit. If you see a clear one-sidedness, treat it as a signal to test a different broker, or a market execution account on a demo, before you risk real capital.