Why am I stopped out when the price went nowhere near my stop level?

[RobertU]

I bought Citigroup yesterday evening for 6194 with a stop at 6014. At 10:34pm the trade was stopped out at this price in spite of the market price going nowhere near that. Why would this have happened? Would the spread have been widened drastically? I'm told I must trade with a stop loss, but it feels as if a stop loss is just a big excuse to close the trade out at a loss.

[HydroBoy]

The price you see on the charts include the spreads. I would give IG a call or email the CS team to understand why this happened.

 

You might be able to see a bit more information in My IG. If you open it in a broser, go to Live Accounts (menu bar at the top), then go to History (on the left menu bar).

On that screen, click on the the Past Activity tab and choose a time range that includes the closing of the trade. On the line of the stop (channel should be System) you can see the opening level, the level at what the trade was closed and the stop level you set. City group is very liquid, so any slippage should be minimal.

I would recommend to check the stop was set correctly. I had one situations in the past in which I though I had updated the stop loss, but for some reason I didn't press enter/accept/whatnot and got burn a bit. Now I always check that the stop loss has been set!