WHAT DOES "OFF QUOTES" MEAN?

So what does off quotes mean?

At the most basic level, off quotes indicates that the best price for the pair you’re trading is not within your “maximum deviation” range you have set.  This usually occurs when there is a lot of volatility and/or when spreads have widened out.  This is not necessarily an indication that your broker is trying to “scam” you out of money, or sabotage your trades.

For example, if you are manually attempting to close your EUR/USD trade at 1.31243 but the second you hit “close order” the price has jumped to 1.31268 your trade may not be executed and you’ll receive an “off quotes” error.

You may also see the off quotes error when an EA is attempting to close a trade on MT4 but the trade has already been closed on the broker’s end, but hasn’t reflected the close in MT4 yet due to any number of technical problems.

If you’re using an EA, ensure you have set your “slippage” to a valid figure.  If you’re using a 5-digit broker you may need to set this to 10 times the number of pips you find acceptable.  For example, if you’d like to set your slippage to 3 pips, set the slippage variable in your EA to 30.

Depending on your brokerage, you may also receive off quotes errors when modifying orders during hours that the markets is closed.  For example, if you attempt to modify an order on Saturday afternoon you will likely receive an “off quotes” errork which makes sense, since there are not quotes streaming over the weekend.