Slippage Review Checklist for Futures Traders
Last verified: 2026-06-02 PDT
Slippage is the difference between the price a trader expected and the price actually received. One bad fill can happen in fast markets. Repeated bad fills are a process issue worth reviewing. A slippage review checklist helps traders separate normal market friction from avoidable execution drift.
What slippage means in plain English
If a trader planned to enter at 18,000.00 and the order fills at 18,001.00, the trade started one point worse than expected. On futures, that difference has a dollar value. The same idea applies to exits and stops. Slippage does not need to be dramatic to change the math. Small fill differences can add up across a session.
Why slippage matters for funded traders
Funded and evaluation traders usually care about daily loss limits, drawdown room, and personal stops. If the plan risks $100 but entry and exit slippage add $35 of extra cost, the account did not take the same trade the plan described. That matters because the practical risk budget is the distance to the loss boundary, not the headline account size.
The review checklist
Start with the basics: planned entry, actual fill, planned stop, actual stop fill, planned size, actual size, order type, time of day, spread, news proximity, and market speed. Then tag the cause. Was the order placed during a news release? Was liquidity thin? Was the stop too tight for normal movement? Was the trader using market orders because they were late?
Simple math example
Assume a micro futures trader expects $50 of risk on a setup. The entry slips by $5, the stop exit slips by $10, and commissions add another cost layer. The setup may still be valid as an educational example, but the account risk is no longer just the clean chart risk. That difference should be reviewed before increasing size.
Bucko workflow
Bucko fits this as an education, journaling, guardrail, and review workflow. A trader can tag slippage, compare planned risk against actual realized risk, attach screenshots, and use trader-defined controls when supported. The goal is not to promise better fills. The goal is to make execution friction visible enough to review.