The Cost Side Nobody Talks About
Spreads, Commissions, And Slippage Quietly Decide A Lot Of Results. Here's How To See Them Clearly.
Most discussion of trading focuses on entries and exits, and almost none on what each trade costs just to exist. For a strategy that trades several times a session, those costs aren't a footnote. They're part of the result. Here's how to think about them in plain terms.
The Three Costs
The spread is the gap between the buying and selling price, and you pay it every time you open a trade. Commission is a fixed fee some account types charge on top of, or instead of, a wider spread. Slippage is the difference between the price you expected and the price you actually got, which tends to grow when markets move fast, such as around news.
A Simple Illustration
These numbers are made up purely to show the idea. Suppose a trade aims for 100 units of profit and costs 10 units in total to enter and exit. Costs take a tenth of the target. Now suppose a different account setup costs 25 units for the same trade. Costs now take a quarter of the target, with exactly the same strategy and exactly the same entries. Over many trades, that gap can be the difference between a system that looks fine and one that doesn't.
Why This Explains Part Of The Backtest Gap
A backtest uses fixed, idealized costs. Live trading has spreads that widen at the worst moments and fills that land a little away from the expected price. That's one of the main reasons live results often look worse than a test, and it's why costs are worth checking before you pick a broker.
What To Do About It
Compare the real cost of trading gold on your account, not the advertised minimum. Look at the spread during busy hours, not just quiet ones. Ask what the commission is. And remember this applies to every broker, ours included, so check it for PU Prime the same way you would anyone else. The free demo is the safest place to see the strategy's behavior before any costs are involved, and the PU Prime route is free for the EA, runs on a live account, and keeps no deadline. $199 stays until October 31st if you'd rather use your own broker.
