Understanding Requotes and Why They Occur

A requote is the broker’s notification that the price at which you tried to execute is no longer available, accompanied by an offer to fill at a different price. It is one of the more frustrating experiences in retail trading, particularly when it happens during a fast-moving market, and the new price offered is materially worse than the original.

Understanding why requotes occur, when they are most common, and what they signal about the execution environment you are trading in converts a frustrating experience into diagnostic information.

What a Requote Actually Is

When you submit a market order, you are requesting execution at the best available price. In a fast-moving market, the price you see on screen and the price available when your order reaches the execution system can differ. When the difference exceeds a threshold set by the broker’s system, instead of automatically filling at the new price, the broker displays the updated price and asks you to confirm whether you want to proceed.

That confirmation request is the requote. The price offered may be better or worse than your original submission price, though in practice, requotes most commonly appear when the price has moved against the trader and the fill would be at a worse level than originally shown.

Requotes are technically a protection mechanism: by notifying you of the price change and requesting confirmation, the broker allows you to decide whether the new price is acceptable rather than executing at an unexpected level. In practice, many traders experience them as obstacles that prevent them from entering at desired prices during fast-moving sessions.

When Requotes Are Most Common

Requotes are most common in two situations, both of which involve rapid price movement between order submission and execution attempt.

Around high-impact data releases. Non-Farm Payrolls, central bank decisions, CPI, and GDP all move prices sharply in the seconds following publication. An order submitted in that window may find that the price has moved beyond the broker’s acceptable slippage threshold by the time it reaches the execution system. Rather than automatically filling at the new price, the system presents a requote. This is most common on platforms that prioritise explicit client control over automatic execution in volatile conditions.

During the gap opens. When the market reopens after a gap, price discovery is rapid, and the spread can be wide. Orders resting in the system before the close, particularly limit and stop orders placed at specific levels, may find that the opening price has moved beyond their intended levels. The requote mechanism presents the available opening price and asks whether to proceed.

The Difference Between Requotes and Slippage

Requotes and slippage are both consequences of price movement between the time an order is submitted and the time it is filled. The difference is in how the broker handles that movement.

With slippage, the broker fills automatically at the new market price without asking for confirmation. The trader accepts the prevailing market price, whatever it is, as the condition of using a market order in a fast-moving environment. The cost is built into the fill price and becomes visible only when comparing the fill to the submission price.

With a requote, the broker pauses the execution and presents the new price, giving the trader the choice to proceed or cancel. The requote is more transparent, as the trader can see the new price before committing. It is also an interruption in the execution process that can cause traders to miss moves in fast markets, particularly if the requote window closes before they respond.

Neither mechanism is inherently superior. Slippage is a cost absorbed silently. Requotes are a cost made visible but accompanied by execution uncertainty.

What Requotes Reveal About an Execution Environment

The frequency of requotes on a given platform under given conditions tells you something about how it is built and how it handles the gap between the quoted price and the executable price.

A platform that requotes frequently around data releases is one where the match between displayed prices and available execution prices is looser, either because of higher latency between price updates and order processing, or because the slippage acceptance band is narrow. The system defaults to requoting rather than filling at the new level.

A platform that rarely requotes, instead filling with slippage when the price has moved, has either invested in infrastructure that reduces the latency between price display and execution (meaning the gap is rarely large enough to trigger a requote threshold), or has set a wider automatic acceptance band for fills (meaning slippage is absorbed by the client rather than flagged for confirmation).

Neither approach eliminates the cost of fast-market execution. They differ in how transparently that cost appears.

Requote Frequency as a Platform Evaluation Criterion

When evaluating a trading platform, testing its requote behaviour under controlled conditions is one of the more informative practical assessments available. Placing market orders on liquid instruments at different times of day, particularly during and around data release windows, reveals how the platform handles execution when prices are moving.

A platform that delivers clean fills during normal sessions but generates frequent requotes around data releases is signalling that its execution infrastructure under stress is less capable than during quiet periods. That gap between normal and stressed performance is exactly the information that headline spread comparisons during calm sessions do not provide.

A platform that consistently fills without requotes during volatile sessions, with symmetric, proportionate slippage, demonstrates tighter integration between price display and execution. The absence of requotes in that context indicates lower latency and deeper liquidity access rather than simply a wider automatic fill band.

The Bottom Line

Requotes occur when the price moves beyond the broker’s acceptance threshold between order submission and execution, and the system presents a confirmation request rather than filling automatically at the new price. They are most common around high-impact events and gap openings.

They are informative as a diagnostic signal: frequent requotes indicate a gap between price display and execution capability that is more pronounced than on platforms with tighter infrastructure. Whether that gap manifests as requotes or as slippage absorbed automatically depends on broker policy; the underlying cause is the same.

The fuller context for how these execution mechanics connect to overall fill quality and the structural factors that differentiate platforms is covered in How Brokers Route Orders and Why It Matters for You and The Difference Between A-Book and B-Book Execution Models.

Darren Clarke is a Senior Trader at Lunaro Financial Services. He has spent 40 years on trading desks ranging from institutional inter-bank FX to retail-focused fintechs and brokerages in the City of London.

Disclaimer:

This material is a marketing communication and is provided for general information and educational purposes only. It does not take into account your personal circumstances, objectives or needs. Any opinions are those of the author at the time of writing and may change without notice. Nothing in this material constitutes (or should be construed as) financial, investment, legal, regulatory or tax advice, or a recommendation to engage in any investment activity. You should not rely on this material when making investment or trading decisions.