Broker with biggest range of UK shares?

Hi all!

I'd like to know which broker has the biggest range of UK shares available as spread-bet products.

The best I've found so far is IG with around 900, but my strategy works best with even bigger ranges. (My modelling has been based on all ~3800 of the LSE shares.)

Does anybody have any advice as to the best broker in terms of LSE coverage on spread-bets?

Thanks,
DM.

dmorris said:

Hi all!

I'd like to know which broker has the biggest range of UK shares available as spread-bet products.

The best I've found so far is IG with around 900, but my strategy works best with even bigger ranges. (My modelling has been based on all ~3800 of the LSE shares.)

Does anybody have any advice as to the best broker in terms of LSE coverage on spread-bets?

Thanks,
DM.

Click to expand...

Man group will offer quotes on any share with a market cap above £10M. I know IG quote above £20M, and suspect they will also quote down to a cap of £10M.

I suspect there are 900 shares posted on IG's website? Above £10M would widen your scope from 900 companies, wouldn't it?

Obviously, you'll get some stinking spreads on the companies capitalised down to only £10M. No doubt you've allowed for this?

Cheers,
UTB

Thanks

the blades said:

Man group will offer quotes on any share with a market cap above £10M. I know IG quote above £20M, and suspect they will also quote down to a cap of £10M.

I suspect there are 900 shares posted on IG's website? Above £10M would widen your scope from 900 companies, wouldn't it?

Obviously, you'll get some stinking spreads on the companies capitalised down to only £10M. No doubt you've allowed for this?

Cheers,
UTB

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply;

All I have is historic EOD data; so I don't actually know the market caps of the ~3800 shares in my analysis set. In an effort to simulate IG's £10m market cap. min. I've restricted my full share-set by excluding stocks < 200p. This takes the ~3800 LSE stocks down to ~900. Unfortunately, my strategy payoffs suffer quite dramatically after this!

I'm using a total spread of ~6% in my model (3% on open, 3% on close); I _think_ that this represents the worst-case spreads (based on IG's dealing handbook.)

What I'm finding out is the dramatic difference between a sanitized computer model, and the nitty gritty of the real world!

I'm pretty sure, though, that the overall profitability (more accurately cash-liquidity) of my strategy correlates directly with the total share range that it's exposed to; i.e. the more shares, the better. Coming down from ~3000 shares exposure to ~900 (assuming these 900 are ~= all LSE shares >200p) reduces the success/failure ratio (on monthly periods, last 10Y historic) from 2/1 to 1/1.

This in turn means that I'm exposed to potentially many months of continual losses before a month or two of bigger wins. While that's still great, it's still frustrating because I know that with a bigger share-range exposure I should be able to take (albeit) small wins most months, as opposed to losses at least half of the months!

Anyway, thanks again for your input.

I think that my best bet for now will be to run the strat. on paper for a couple of months and to phone ALL the brokers I can find for every buy signal that I get. That may be the only way to really find this out.

I was hoping that some brokers already had a reputation for big coverage of the LSE, but it looks like IG's >£10m marcap is about maximal. I guess I'll just have to do the legwork of phoning up all the brokers every day for all of my buy signals...

D.

on second look, I'd suggest there are around 2,000 shares and investment trusts with a market cap above £10M.

A bit better than 900.

Once you go outside the FTSE 350, you'll find shares with greaterr than 6% spread. However, for non FTSE350 this'll be about right on average IMHO.

Cheers,
UTB

Thanks

the blades said:

on second look, I'd suggest there are around 2,000 shares and investment trusts with a market cap above £10M.

A bit better than 900.

Once you go outside the FTSE 350, you'll find shares with greaterr than 6% spread. However, for non FTSE350 this'll be about right on average IMHO.

Cheers,
UTB

Click to expand...

Oh, that's good to know, thank you!

It might have been a good thing for me to get the "bad news" that I might be restricted to a small subset of the LSE, because it's forcing me to improve the efficiency of my algorithmic triggers; I'm experimenting with deriving optimal open/close pos. strategies on a per-stock basis now, as opposed to simply finding a single open/close strategy that best matched the entire analysis set of stocks.

I'm hoping that will produce better entry/exit signals.

Thanks again for the input!

D.