What Are Requotes in Trading?

A requote happens when your broker refuses to fill your order at the price you asked for and offers a new, usually worse, price to confirm. It shows up most often on forex with so-called dealing-desk brokers, the ones who act as your counterparty. On an exchange, where trades clear through a central system, requotes do not exist, so my main advice is simple: pick a transparent broker with no dealing desk, or trade on an exchange where you are against the market rather than against the broker.

Requotes are one of those things that infuriate a beginner and make them doubt the market is fair: you click buy at one price and get handed another, worse one. Trading since 2013, I will put it plainly: the problem is usually not the market but the type of broker, and behind a requote there can sit a direct conflict of interest. Below I cover what a requote is, why brokers do it, and how to pick a venue without the problem.

In this article we'll cover:

• a requote is a broker refusing your requested price and offering a new, worse one;
• requotes are typical of dealing-desk brokers who act as your counterparty;
• constant requotes in a calm market are a warning sign and a possible conflict of interest;
• the cure, in my experience, is a transparent broker with no dealing desk, or an exchange.

Let us start with what a requote is and why it happens.

What Is Requote?

A requote is a repeated request for a price: you send a market order, the broker says it cannot fill at the requested price and offers a new one, usually a touch worse, for your confirmation. In effect the trade is paused and the decision is handed back to you. It happens most often in moments of sharp volatility, such as on news, when price changes in fractions of a second between your click and the fill, and latency plays a part too, from slow internet to an overloaded broker server.

It is important not to confuse a requote with slippage. With slippage the order fills at once, just at a slightly different price; with a requote the order does not fill at all until you confirm the new price, and slippage can land in your favour while a requote almost always goes against you. The phenomenon is specific to the FX market and is tied to how your market order is processed.

How Requote Works in Practice

The root of it is the broker's type. Some brokers run a dealing desk, also called market makers or the B-book model: instead of routing your order to the real market, the broker becomes the other side of the trade. That is a direct conflict of interest, because when you lose, the broker earns, and this is exactly where a requote turns into a tool. The broker sees your order and can pause it by re-asking the price, especially if the trade is unfavourable to them.

That is where the link to bad faith sits. I am not saying every requote is a trick; on fast news even honest venues produce them. But if requotes pour in constantly, and in a calm market at that, it is a red flag: either the broker's technology is weak or it is deliberately playing against you. This is one reason I prefer an exchange, where you trade against the market through clearing rather than against the broker, and these games simply do not occur. Choosing the venue carefully matters, which is the focus of the piece on How to Choose a Trading Platform.

My Experience: Trade Where Execution Is Transparent

The good news is that requotes can be defended against, and this is not personal advice, only what I chose for myself. The main thing is the execution type: pick a broker with no dealing desk, an ECN or STP model, where your order goes straight to liquidity providers and fills at the best available price. There you essentially get no requotes; instead you may get slippage, and that is honest. Check the broker's regulation and reputation, and note that many platforms let you set a slippage tolerance, so an order either fills within your limit or is rejected, but without re-asking the price.

A simple check is to place a few trial trades in an active market and watch how orders fill: if instead of normal execution you keep seeing the price re-asked, draw your own conclusions. My principled position is that the best way to forget requotes is to leave the dealing desk behind for an exchange, where execution is transparent and you face the market, not your broker.