Is This a Normal Price Movement or an Execution Anomaly on MT5?

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Hi everyone,

I encountered a strange price behavior on the LTCUSD pair using the MT5 platform, and I'm hoping to get some feedback from the community.

In the attached screenshot, you'll see a candle that shows a very sharp upward spike followed by an instant drop — almost like a price "teleport." The movement seems disconnected from the surrounding price action and doesn’t appear to reflect actual market flow.

🔹 Time: 2025.05.09 around 12:18–12:30
🔹 Timeframe: M1
🔹 Symbol: LTCUSD
🔹 Spread at the time: 99 points (as shown in the screenshot)
🔹 The candle in question shows an upper shadow that seems out of place compared to the tick data.

I’ve also checked the tick data from that time window, and the spike in the chart isn’t supported by the Ask/Bid quotes — which made me wonder whether this is a visual/charting bug or an off-market execution.

Has anyone seen this type of behavior before on MT5?
Is this considered normal under certain conditions, or does it indicate a possible anomaly?

Any insights or technical explanation would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

Files:
LTCUSD__MT5_screenshot.jpg  154 kb
 
Walid Achermoun:

Hi everyone,

I encountered a strange price behavior on the LTCUSD pair using the MT5 platform, and I'm hoping to get some feedback from the community.

In the attached screenshot, you'll see a candle that shows a very sharp upward spike followed by an instant drop — almost like a price "teleport." The movement seems disconnected from the surrounding price action and doesn’t appear to reflect actual market flow.

🔹 Time: 2025.05.09 around 12:18–12:30
🔹 Timeframe: M1
🔹 Symbol: LTCUSD
🔹 Spread at the time: 99 points (as shown in the screenshot)
🔹 The candle in question shows an upper shadow that seems out of place compared to the tick data.

I’ve also checked the tick data from that time window, and the spike in the chart isn’t supported by the Ask/Bid quotes — which made me wonder whether this is a visual/charting bug or an off-market execution.

Has anyone seen this type of behavior before on MT5?
Is this considered normal under certain conditions, or does it indicate a possible anomaly?

Any insights or technical explanation would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

Welcome to the world of Crypto CFD's. Sounds about typical for that world.

 
It depends on the broker.
Because the charts, the price on the charts, the symbols to trade, and the names of the symbols, and the time of the price on the chart, the trading account (and trading money/deposit/balance) - all of them are related to the brokers only.
 

To expound further, CFD broker-dealers are captive markets. CFD pricing relies entirely upon your specific broker-dealer's pool of liquidity partners and retail customers. There is no centralized exchange.

Two important things to check are:

  1. Your broker-dealer's trading agreement that you signed when you opened an account, and
  2. Your country's OTC (over-the-counter) market regulations.
If no pricing terms are stated in both of those, then there is nothing preventing price/price feed manipulation. Having said that, it's also possible that you experienced a sharp drop in liquidity. Without access to volume nor O/I (open interest) in CFD's, you'll likely never know. Compounding things further, we can deduce that a broker-dealer that gets surprised with a sharp drop in liquidity might engage in manipulation out of self-perceived "necessity." Therefore, both may have happened.
 
Crypto can be extremely volatile. 
 
Walid Achermoun:

Hi everyone,

I encountered a strange price behavior on the LTCUSD pair using the MT5 platform, and I'm hoping to get some feedback from the community.

In the attached screenshot, you'll see a candle that shows a very sharp upward spike followed by an instant drop — almost like a price "teleport." The movement seems disconnected from the surrounding price action and doesn’t appear to reflect actual market flow.

🔹 Time: 2025.05.09 around 12:18–12:30
🔹 Timeframe: M1
🔹 Symbol: LTCUSD
🔹 Spread at the time: 99 points (as shown in the screenshot)
🔹 The candle in question shows an upper shadow that seems out of place compared to the tick data.

I’ve also checked the tick data from that time window, and the spike in the chart isn’t supported by the Ask/Bid quotes — which made me wonder whether this is a visual/charting bug or an off-market execution.

Has anyone seen this type of behavior before on MT5?
Is this considered normal under certain conditions, or does it indicate a possible anomaly?

Any insights or technical explanation would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

Spread is approx.100 points and the chart demonstrates a pefectly valid difference between the bars (formed by bid) and buy arrows (performed by ask). BTW you did not specify the instrument specification, so this is just my assumption.

For better analysis please provide exact numbers for bars and ticks - the screenshot is not enough.

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