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Requote
Working definition
A venue's response to an order that offers a new price instead of a fill, obliging the trader to accept the revised price, retry, or abandon the trade.
A requote is a venue’s reply to an order that offers a different price instead of a fill. You send an order against the price you can see; instead of executing it, the venue answers with a new price and asks whether you still want it. On dealing-desk platforms it is a formal message type: the old default order mode meant “fill at exactly this price or ask me again”, and the requote was the built-in refusal. A requote is not a rejection, which ends the order, and it is not slippage, which is measured on trades that happened. It is a trade that has not happened yet, with the decision and the clock handed back to you.
Why venues requote
The legitimate reading is straightforward: the market moved between order and arrival, and the venue declines to honour a price that no longer exists. Prices do move, and a venue that filled every stale price would be systematically run over. In this reading the requote is the exchange-adjacent cousin of last look — a refusal in place of a hold window — and one of the three answers an order can come back with, beside a fill and a rejection, which is the subject of why do my forex orders get rejected.
How to tell a risk control from an option
The integrity question, as with every discretionary execution mechanism, is symmetry. Interim price moves are roughly as likely to favour the client as the venue, so requotes issued honestly should arrive in both directions at comparable rates.
A venue that fills instantly when the drift went its way and requotes precisely when the drift went the client’s way has converted a risk control into an option it exercises against its own customers — the requote-shaped version of adverse selection. The pattern is invisible in any single trade and unambiguous in aggregate: requote frequency conditioned on interim drift direction, broken out by session and proximity to scheduled events, characterises how the discretion is actually used. The records that make the comparison possible are the ones most platforms discard — the requoted attempts themselves, with the price requested, the price offered back and the time between — which is why the first finding is often that your export does not keep them.
What a declined requote costs
Requotes cost money even when declined. The round trip consumes time in exactly the fast markets where requotes cluster, and the market keeps moving while the trader decides; the eventual fill — or the abandoned trade — inherits that delay. An honest accounting books the requote into total execution cost alongside slippage, rather than treating declined fills as events that never happened. The Execution Cost Auditor is the instrument for the fills half of that accounting; the declined half is only measurable where your platform kept the requotes, and the entry on fill ratio says why a published ratio without its definition does not settle it.
Commonly confused with
Neighbouring concepts that get used interchangeably, and the distinction that actually separates them.
- Last look
Both are discretion exercised on an order that has already been sent, but the shape differs. Last look is a hold window in which the provider decides; a requote is a refusal that arrives with a counter-offer attached. One makes you wait, the other makes you answer.
- Rejection
A rejection ends the order. A requote keeps it alive and hands the decision back to you, at a price you did not choose, in a market that is still moving while you think. The second is easier to mistake for a courtesy.
- Quote fade
Fade happens before your order arrives — the liquidity withdraws as you reach for it. A requote happens after it arrives, as the venue's answer. Same underlying asymmetry, different side of the moment your order lands.
- Slippage
Slippage is measured on trades that happened. A requote is a trade that did not, which is precisely why a venue with heavy requoting can report flattering slippage: the fills that would have looked worst were never fills.
How to measure it in your own data
A definition you cannot test is a definition you have to take on trust. This is the shortest honest route from the concept to a number you computed yourself.
- Records you need
Order records that retain requoted attempts, not only completed trades — the submission timestamp, the price requested, the price offered back, and a market reference over the interval between. Many retail platforms discard this; discovering that yours does is itself a finding.
- What you compute
Requote frequency conditioned on which way the market drifted between submission and response, broken out by session and by proximity to scheduled events. The conditioning is the entire exercise — a raw requote count says nothing about how the discretion is being used.
- What the answer tells you
Interim moves are roughly as likely to favour you as the venue, so honestly issued requotes should arrive in both directions at comparable rates. Requotes concentrated where the drift went your way, against instant fills where it went the venue's way, is a risk control being used as an option. Add the time cost either way: the round trip burns seconds in exactly the fast markets where requotes cluster, and the eventual fill inherits that delay.
If this has already cost you
Requote frequency conditioned on which way the market drifted is measurable, and it is a different question from how often they happen.
- Feed Fidelity Assay“Is the feed my terminal shows me behaving consistently?”Will not establish: A verdict on your broker. One exported log from one terminal measures your feed as you received it — venue-side behaviour, other account tiers and intent are all outside what this data can carry.
Intake is not open yet, so none of these can be commissioned today. They are listed here so you know the measurement exists and what it would and would not settle — the launch list hears first.
Questions and answers
Is a requote the same as a rejection?
No. A rejection closes the order; a requote returns it to you with a new price and an invitation to accept, retry or abandon. That difference matters because the requote transfers the decision — and the elapsed time — to the trader, in a market that does not pause while they decide.
Does getting requotes mean my broker is acting dishonestly?
Not on its own. Prices genuinely move between order and arrival, and a venue that honoured every stale price would be systematically run over. What distinguishes a risk control from an option is symmetry, and symmetry is only visible in aggregate — never in the single trade that annoyed you.
Do requotes cost me anything if I decline them?
Yes, in time. The round trip consumes seconds in precisely the fast markets where requotes cluster, and the market keeps moving while the decision sits with you. Whether you accept the new price, retry, or walk away, the delay is already spent. An honest accounting books that into total execution cost rather than treating a declined fill as an event that never happened.
Why do requotes cluster around news?
Because that is when prices move fastest between submission and arrival, which is both the legitimate reason a venue declines a stale price and the moment when discretion is most valuable to whoever holds it. It is also when retail stop and pending orders are most concentrated, so the two distributions overlap.
Related terms
Derived from the links this entry makes and the entries that link back to it.
Where the term is used
Instrument pages whose published copy uses this term. Each page states what it measures and what it does not establish.
In the research
Requote comes up in four research notes on this site, and this entry lists three of them.