Best Thread CMC Markets owner answers your questions

[PC at CMC Markets]

Hi gle101

thanks for your commnt and time to blog.
I prefer to win business on merit with best patform, pricing and execution. If I have to offer gimmicks and special offers to get business then in the long run I will fail.
All focus has to be on the platform, pricing, execution and institutional execution. Gimmicks and special offers generate the wrong type of client behaviour, short term client experience. This business has to be about service and execution. Why does financial spread betting have to be so different in how it attracts clients compared to financial trading of futures and physicals. I think because the industry has evolved that way. Doesnt mean it has to stay that way. doing my bit to improve the spread bet industry.
thanks pc

I agree with what is said, but at the same time I think you are a little bit unfair to Ross. New clients cost money, that is a fact, no matter how you try you will have to pay in some way or the other to obtain these, this in order to take market share for your new platform.

 

[PC at CMC Markets]

hi montmorency
we lay off between 80 to 90 percent of our net exposure to the markets through banks and exchanges.
thanks pc

Peter,

I am amazed at your stamina for sticking with this thread so long, and answering so many questions already. I promise this will be my last question for a while. (Even I go to bed eventually).


Would you care to comment on what extent, if any, you lay off your customers bets (or net bets) in the underlying market?

Simon from the competition has written about this from time to time, and I think I have a reasonable idea of how it works for them. I guess you must be doing something similar.

Many thanks.

 

[gle101]

Hi gle101

thanks for your commnt and time to blog.
I prefer to win business on merit with best patform, pricing and execution. If I have to offer gimmicks and special offers to get business then in the long run I will fail.
All focus has to be on the platform, pricing, execution and institutional execution. Gimmicks and special offers generate the wrong type of client behaviour, short term client experience. This business has to be about service and execution. Why does financial spread betting have to be so different in how it attracts clients compared to financial trading of futures and physicals. I think because the industry has evolved that way. Doesnt mean it has to stay that way. doing my bit to improve the spread bet industry.
thanks pc

In my opinion, at the moment I have got to pay CMC to start trading with you, not a very good trade off, is it?

 

[Ross Spur]

Hi Ross

Thanks for your blog and taking the time.
I have to say that if you need £100 to convince you to try out a new platform then you are not doing yourself justice. we give you a demo platform the execution is the same as the live system and really if you need an incentive to try something new then maybe you should stick with your existing provider. if you like headlines and gimmicks then sorry we are not the shop for you but good luck with your trading.

we are completely focused on delivering a new improved and exceptional trading experience. my point is that we as a company and preferably as an industry want to move away from special offers and gimmicks. this industry should be about the best execution, the best pricing, no head line spreads, no requotes etc. I am not saying it will be easy but we are not going to take a step backwards. we want to offer institutional type execution to the retail markets. I know it will be hard for you to convert to us and I guess the best way to attract your business is to offer you someincentive but you know what I prefer to stick to our guns, deliver a first class service and attract clients based on service, execution and platform not on special offers.

thanks
peter

Hi PC

Pauper though I am, I don't really need the £100, but given the choice I'd prefer to keep it or donate it to charity! I agree that things like platform, execution, charts, customer service, etc, are what matter most in the long run, but I don't understand how account opening offers would be a step backwards. Just seems to me like a cost-effective way of attracting business. If there were still only a couple of other SBs, you could expect customers to find you eventually, but now there are dozens, and even the worst of them are far better than what was accepted as the norm not long ago.

btw, when I tried the demo with Firefox today the facility to drag stop orders on the chart didn't work. The platform also seemed generally slow to load and respond. I then switched to Chrome and it worked perfectly. Are there any browser compatibility issues?

 

[gle101]

Here it goes again. I think it will extremely hard to make a breakthrough, in this competitive industry for newcomers. They have to have a great platform and support, but equally important is the spread. The former they apparently stand a chance to offer, but the later not, if they stick to their present level. I found it very hard to believe CMC can succeed without at least offering a "standard" industry spread on their products. Time will tell if they can prove me wrong. My guess is, that eventually they have to adjust, and this probably sooner than later.

 

[montmorencyt2w]

Well, I've now had a go with the demo.

We'll take the comments about colours as read.

One fairly trivial point: on the order ticket, when you set your stop-loss, as well as the price and the margin, it also shows the number of pips. However, if you bring up the Take Profit, it only shows the price and the money value. It would be good if it also showed the number of pips.


Much more important:

This may be fundamental to using a Flash interface and not Java (like most of the SB platforms I have used), but you seem to be limited to having the charts all in the same window/tab as the trading window. This has one obvious disadvantage that you lose part of the screen to the things which are always displayed at the bottom of the trading window ("Library" etc, plus the continuous display of account value). So the chart is never going to be as big as it could be.

Also I couldn't see a way of minimising the chart, then bringing it back up.

The way you resize the chart "window" is not the same as with a classic Windows box. You can only drag from the bottom right corner. That is rather limiting (and clumsy IMO).
I found that if I pushed the chart down, dragging its top, I could get the bottom of the chart behind the row of things on the bottom, and then could no longer access the resizing bottom-right corner. I couldn't get the chart to appear on top of those "things". (Maybe that's some bad setting in my Windows setup - I am using Windows XP on a laptop, by the way.

Wit the more usual Java charts on my other SB platforms, once I have one or more charts up I can minimise the trading window if I wish, and let the chart fill almost the whole screen. I can switch between charts reasonably easily. I don't know if Java charts use more resources (I suspect they do), but that apart, they just seem more convenient to work with.

If this is going to be a fundamental part of the decision to go with Flash (for all its no doubt wealth of bells and whistles), I think this is going to be very limiting. I felt I wasn't at all in control of my charts and it made the whole experience less pleasant than it should have been.

Pity, because in other respects, I could see a lot of good things about the platform.
(Maybe it depends on what version of flash player is installed on the PC. I had some problems updating it last time I tried, so I'm probably not running the latest for my version of Windows).

EDIT: OK, OK, I've just looked back, and see the earlier post where you said they were working on tabs and multiple screens. Depending on how it is done, that may solve the problem.

From the point of view of using most of the physical screen (for the chart(s)), I think you need to be able to open them up in a separate window, rather than just a new tab - Not 100% sure about that, but that's my first thought. That may incur more overhead however. No doubt your technical boffins (showing my age there) will have a view on this.

 

[PC at CMC Markets]

Good morning gle101
I do not agree with you. I believe our spreads and execution across many products to be superior to the competition. I am basing this on consistency, speed, automated execution, no ticket time out, no dealer referral and consistent competitive precision spreads. also most of our spreads (apart from the odd head line spread) are equal or better than the competition.
You seem to love head line spreads and you base most of your points on head line spreads. You seem to be influenced by head line spreads over what really matters. surprised at you gle101 I thought you knew the markets.
still I do not have exact evidence of the above because we have not tested it thoroughly but I know the markets, I know our execution policy and I know the technology and that is what I am basing my theory on.

If you can find tighter spreads, the same execution policy, pricing, speed of execution, automated execution, no fill or kill policy, precision pricing, no requotes, no dealer referral, then you are right. I do not know of any spread bet company out there that offers all of these things. do you.

please can we move the discussion on from head line spreads and special offers and try to raise the bar to get this industry to a higher level
thanks pc

In my opinion, at the moment I have got to pay CMC to start trading with you, not a very good trade off, is it?

 

[PC at CMC Markets]

hi gle101
Newcomer that's a new one on me. We have been around longer than all spread bet companies apart from a couple. we have 16 offices worldwide and we were the first company to put spread bet on the internet. We were also the first company to offer forex on line in 1996. We began life in 1989 probably when you were at school.
since we launched spread bet on line the whole industry has followed us. In addition we were the first company to offer rolling cash spread bets, new to spread bet industry and now the most popular way to spread bet. I can go on but no need I think you get the point.

we already have excellent spread bet business and since we launched next gen spread bet our client take up is nearly three times what it was compared to old gen.

most spread betters can see beyond head line spreads and I find it distracting that so much of this blog time is dedicated to head line spreads, special offers and not the real issues in the spread bet industry. still you ask the questions and I will continue to answer them but the answers will always be the same.

tks for your time
peter

Here it goes again. I think it will extremely hard to make a breakthrough, in this competitive industry for newcomers. They have to have a great platform and support, but equally important is the spread. The former they apparently stand a chance to offer, but the later not, if they stick to their present level. I found it very hard to believe CMC can succeed without at least offering a "standard" industry spread on their products. Time will tell if they can prove me wrong. My guess is, that eventually they have to adjust, and this probably sooner than later.

 

[PC at CMC Markets]

Hi Ross

Thanks for the blog. I think my point about offers are they are creating the wrong type of service for clients. I believe spread bet firms should be totally focused on offering a financial betting service and all efforts and cost savings should be ploughed into a better service rather than special offers and head line spreads. CMC Markets have invested enormous amounts in technology, not just the client facing side of technology but also the middle and back end stuff. for me it is all about execution of the trade, pricing, spreads and speed. Fill or kill should be eliminated from this industry. If it means slightly wider spreads then I think that is better for spread betters in the long run. also I believe that dealer referrals, no re-quotes, ticket time out, bad executions should all be eliminated from this industry. Whilst spread bet firms are spending money on cash backs, special offers, head line spreads, they are not focusing on what is really important to people that want to bet on the financial markets. this is my opinion and is not our way at CMC Markets, not whilst I am here anyway.

Ultimately it is up to the spread bet client to choose. if you encourage such behaviour it will never go away. Now you can execute your spread bet without all of the above issues with CMC Markets but unless spread betters stop taking up special offers, demand the above then it will take a long time for the industry to catch up and offer the same service we offer. But it will happened. hey you might even get to like dark back ground charts.

have had no browser issues with next gen. asked the team and works great with firex fox but will let them know in I.T.,

thanks for your time
Peter

Hi PC

Pauper though I am, I don't really need the £100, but given the choice I'd prefer to keep it or donate it to charity! I agree that things like platform, execution, charts, customer service, etc, are what matter most in the long run, but I don't understand how account opening offers would be a step backwards. Just seems to me like a cost-effective way of attracting business. If there were still only a couple of other SBs, you could expect customers to find you eventually, but now there are dozens, and even the worst of them are far better than what was accepted as the norm not long ago.

btw, when I tried the demo with Firefox today the facility to drag stop orders on the chart didn't work. The platform also seemed generally slow to load and respond. I then switched to Chrome and it worked perfectly. Are there any browser compatibility issues?

 

[PC at CMC Markets]

Hi Montmorency

thanks for the blog and very good info here. I have passed it all onto the boffins in i.t. Most of the issues will be sorted once the new chart upgrade comes out in next month or so. but in future once we launch new stuff we will definitely be getting client feed back like yours.

when it comes to stops, when you enter a stop you get the money value and the pips come up. so you have the pip value you just have to click on the pip window and you can adjust your stop by pips. this will change the money value next to it.

in back office positions, you have the stop price and the money value. you can adjust either the same way as above.

thanks for your blog
regards peter

Well, I've now had a go with the demo.

We'll take the comments about colours as read.

One fairly trivial point: on the order ticket, when you set your stop-loss, as well as the price and the margin, it also shows the number of pips. However, if you bring up the Take Profit, it only shows the price and the money value. It would be good if it also showed the number of pips.


Much more important:

This may be fundamental to using a Flash interface and not Java (like most of the SB platforms I have used), but you seem to be limited to having the charts all in the same window/tab as the trading window. This has one obvious disadvantage that you lose part of the screen to the things which are always displayed at the bottom of the trading window ("Library" etc, plus the continuous display of account value). So the chart is never going to be as big as it could be.

Also I couldn't see a way of minimising the chart, then bringing it back up.

The way you resize the chart "window" is not the same as with a classic Windows box. You can only drag from the bottom right corner. That is rather limiting (and clumsy IMO).
I found that if I pushed the chart down, dragging its top, I could get the bottom of the chart behind the row of things on the bottom, and then could no longer access the resizing bottom-right corner. I couldn't get the chart to appear on top of those "things". (Maybe that's some bad setting in my Windows setup - I am using Windows XP on a laptop, by the way.

Wit the more usual Java charts on my other SB platforms, once I have one or more charts up I can minimise the trading window if I wish, and let the chart fill almost the whole screen. I can switch between charts reasonably easily. I don't know if Java charts use more resources (I suspect they do), but that apart, they just seem more convenient to work with.

If this is going to be a fundamental part of the decision to go with Flash (for all its no doubt wealth of bells and whistles), I think this is going to be very limiting. I felt I wasn't at all in control of my charts and it made the whole experience less pleasant than it should have been.

Pity, because in other respects, I could see a lot of good things about the platform.
(Maybe it depends on what version of flash player is installed on the PC. I had some problems updating it last time I tried, so I'm probably not running the latest for my version of Windows).

EDIT: OK, OK, I've just looked back, and see the earlier post where you said they were working on tabs and multiple screens. Depending on how it is done, that may solve the problem.

From the point of view of using most of the physical screen (for the chart(s)), I think you need to be able to open them up in a separate window, rather than just a new tab - Not 100% sure about that, but that's my first thought. That may incur more overhead however. No doubt your technical boffins (showing my age there) will have a view on this.

 

[jesteruk]

Good Morning Peter hope your well.
Changing the subject slightly from talk of the platform and spreads...
Would you be able to tell use a bit about how you derive your prices for the different instruments?
Do equities follow the exact market price plus your spread? How about commodities and indices? Do these follow the equivalent futures price or cash?
Cheers

 

[Ross Spur]

Hi PC

I came across this snippet from an article about you on the Finanical Spread Betting site:

"This year I'll take £25 million out of the company. I don't know what to do with it, so ideas on a postcard, please," he says, beaming. He means it - he really doesn't know what to do with all his cash.

To save me the cost of a stamp, can I suggest here that some of the cash should go to previously disgruntled CMC clients who would like to give the next-gen platform a go?

 

[PC at CMC Markets]

sorry too late Ross it all went to charity should have saved £100 for you
pc

Hi PC

I came across this snippet from an article about you on the Finanical Spread Betting site:

"This year I'll take £25 million out of the company. I don't know what to do with it, so ideas on a postcard, please," he says, beaming. He means it - he really doesn't know what to do with all his cash.

To save me the cost of a stamp, can I suggest here that some of the cash should go to previously disgruntled CMC clients who would like to give the next-gen platform a go?

 

[Ross Spur]

sorry too late Ross it all went to charity should have saved £100 for you
pc

Damn!

 

[leerees]

To be honest I have to say CMC's graphical interface is totally awesome, better than anything I've seen elsewhere.

I would have loved to have opened a stock trading account with them but I found better spreads elsewhere. If CMC sorted out their spreads on the UK markets I would open an account tomorrow.

I ended up going with MFGlobal and I'm very happy (due to the tight spreads) however I do sometimes wish the interface was like CMC's.

I noticed some people in the thread criticising CMC's platform for being slow but it ran fast on mine, probably because I invested in a decent PC.

 

[Black Swan]

To be honest I have to say CMC's graphical interface is totally awesome, better than anything I've seen elsewhere.

I would have loved to have opened a stock trading account with them but I found better spreads elsewhere. If CMC sorted out their spreads on the UK markets I would open an account tomorrow.

I ended up going with MFGlobal and I'm very happy (due to the tight spreads) however I do sometimes wish the interface was like CMC's.

I noticed some people in the thread criticising CMC's platform for being slow but it ran fast on mine, probably because I invested in a decent PC.

Got to agree with this, platform/interface is very good, pushing the envelope etc.

 

[Black Swan]

Well, I've now had a go with the demo.

We'll take the comments about colours as read.

One fairly trivial point: on the order ticket, when you set your stop-loss, as well as the price and the margin, it also shows the number of pips. However, if you bring up the Take Profit, it only shows the price and the money value. It would be good if it also showed the number of pips.


Much more important:

This may be fundamental to using a Flash interface and not Java (like most of the SB platforms I have used), but you seem to be limited to having the charts all in the same window/tab as the trading window. This has one obvious disadvantage that you lose part of the screen to the things which are always displayed at the bottom of the trading window ("Library" etc, plus the continuous display of account value). So the chart is never going to be as big as it could be.

Also I couldn't see a way of minimising the chart, then bringing it back up.

The way you resize the chart "window" is not the same as with a classic Windows box. You can only drag from the bottom right corner. That is rather limiting (and clumsy IMO).
I found that if I pushed the chart down, dragging its top, I could get the bottom of the chart behind the row of things on the bottom, and then could no longer access the resizing bottom-right corner. I couldn't get the chart to appear on top of those "things". (Maybe that's some bad setting in my Windows setup - I am using Windows XP on a laptop, by the way.

Wit the more usual Java charts on my other SB platforms, once I have one or more charts up I can minimise the trading window if I wish, and let the chart fill almost the whole screen. I can switch between charts reasonably easily. I don't know if Java charts use more resources (I suspect they do), but that apart, they just seem more convenient to work with.

If this is going to be a fundamental part of the decision to go with Flash (for all its no doubt wealth of bells and whistles), I think this is going to be very limiting. I felt I wasn't at all in control of my charts and it made the whole experience less pleasant than it should have been.

Pity, because in other respects, I could see a lot of good things about the platform.
(Maybe it depends on what version of flash player is installed on the PC. I had some problems updating it last time I tried, so I'm probably not running the latest for my version of Windows).

EDIT: OK, OK, I've just looked back, and see the earlier post where you said they were working on tabs and multiple screens. Depending on how it is done, that may solve the problem.

From the point of view of using most of the physical screen (for the chart(s)), I think you need to be able to open them up in a separate window, rather than just a new tab - Not 100% sure about that, but that's my first thought. That may incur more overhead however. No doubt your technical boffins (showing my age there) will have a view on this.

OMG "Technical Boffins"!? Good to see you back buddy. You still SB -ing FX?

 

[gle101]

Good morning gle101
I do not agree with you. I believe our spreads and execution across many products to be superior to the competition. I am basing this on consistency, speed, automated execution, no ticket time out, no dealer referral and consistent competitive precision spreads. also most of our spreads (apart from the odd head line spread) are equal or better than the competition.
You seem to love head line spreads and you base most of your points on head line spreads. You seem to be influenced by head line spreads over what really matters. surprised at you gle101 I thought you knew the markets.
still I do not have exact evidence of the above because we have not tested it thoroughly but I know the markets, I know our execution policy and I know the technology and that is what I am basing my theory on.

If you can find tighter spreads, the same execution policy, pricing, speed of execution, automated execution, no fill or kill policy, precision pricing, no requotes, no dealer referral, then you are right. I do not know of any spread bet company out there that offers all of these things. do you.

please can we move the discussion on from head line spreads and special offers and try to raise the bar to get this industry to a higher level
thanks pc

No totally I do not have all these things, the only thing I got more compared to trading with CMC is money left in the pocket. Sorry Peter, spreads are important, and will continue to be so for many SB traders.

 

[jesteruk]

I think the talk of spreads depends from which angle you look at the market. If your in and out in a couple of hours or less then it must be massively important. If taking a long term view and holding trades for days/weeks/months then an extra point here and there really makes little difference.

 

[gle101]

hi gle101
Newcomer that's a new one on me. We have been around longer than all spread bet companies apart from a couple. we have 16 offices worldwide and we were the first company to put spread bet on the internet. We were also the first company to offer forex on line in 1996. We began life in 1989 probably when you were at school.
since we launched spread bet on line the whole industry has followed us. In addition we were the first company to offer rolling cash spread bets, new to spread bet industry and now the most popular way to spread bet. I can go on but no need I think you get the point.

we already have excellent spread bet business and since we launched next gen spread bet our client take up is nearly three times what it was compared to old gen.

most spread betters can see beyond head line spreads and I find it distracting that so much of this blog time is dedicated to head line spreads, special offers and not the real issues in the spread bet industry. still you ask the questions and I will continue to answer them but the answers will always be the same.

tks for your time
peter

Ha ha, I really got you going on that one. When it comes to SB CMC is quite an unwritten story, at least for me. This story will unfold on this thread in the years to come.