Best Thread CMC Markets owner answers your questions

[PC at CMC Markets]

Re: 1. Bund 2. Platform 3. Reports

Hi Mike

Hope you had a good weekend.
Thanks for your posting.

1. bunds are not on next gen platform yet because we want to price them up as a rolling cash product and not a quarterly product. This work is going on now and should be with you on next up grade of next gen due in next four weeks or so. sorry cannot give you exact date.

2. glad charts are beginning to improve for you.

3. reports. not sure what you mean by this but if you mean company reports etc then there will be data and is data on insights and news etc. we cannot and do not issue recommendations. we also have pattern recognition on our cfd site in UK and this will be integrated with next gen in due course.


Risk warning
Spread betting, CFDs and FX are leveraged products and carry a high level of risk to your capital. It is possible to lose more than your initial investment. These products may not be suitable for all investors, therefore ensure you understand the risks involved and seek independent advice if necessary.

Peter,

1. It is not an issue for me at the moment, but on the demo I could not see the Bund (or other bonds). I would be surprised if you did not offer this, so is that just a demo limitation?

2. To say something positive, apart from the charts, the platform itself is growing on me.

3. I don't know if you actually have this on the live platform, or are planning it, but it would be good to provide the trader with some reasonably good performance reports. Personally, I haven't bothered too much about performance numbers in the past (maybe that's been my downfall ), but I see some quite sophisticated reports being posted sometimes on T2W. Sometimes it will be people's own work, but I get the impression that some trading platforms do quite a lot in this area. As you have said you want the world of SB to be more like the world of ("proper") trading, it would be good to assist the spread-better to become as professional as possible. I'm thinking of things like win/loss ratios, drawdowns, and any other ratios or number which are considered important, when the trader is trying to judge his own performance, and rate of improvement (or the opposite).

One SB platform I use allows you to dump your account history into a spreadsheet, which is a good place for the person who wants to process their own numbers to start off with.


Many thanks,

 

[PC at CMC Markets]

so who do you work for then

PC you keep offering these guys a night out, may I have one please? I took on someone who had been a dealer of yours once (name is Maninka, best not give the surname) - very nice fellow, still works in our back office. He could come too!

 

[piphead]

good morning piphead

many thanks for your response and taking the time to post your views.
Firstly I do not know if you can open account with us in London until I speak to my compliance department tomorrow. They do not work Sundays. I know some European countries have restrictions on spread betting so I need to check with compliace about Italy. I will get back to you tomorrow.

On another point, we have office in Italy in Milan. I was there last year to officially open it. They offer cfds and you can speak to them. You will find their details on our web site. You are welcome to go and see them or call them. Mention my name and they might stand to attention ha ha

will respond tomorrow.
have a nice weekend.

peter

Thanks Peter,
I hope I can open one legaly because I already have a spread betting account with another firm
IG said I would have to use their italian branch which only deal in CFD's but to be honest I don't understand what CFD's were. To tell you the truth I don't trust italian companies -Too many horror stories! Guess I will have to read up if the answer is NO.
Cheers

 

[jesteruk]

Good afternoon Peter

Another quick question. Some of your competitors and also your own marketmaker platform appear to offer guaranteed stops for a spread of commission premium. Is this something you will be offering on the next gen platform soon?

 

[rjmahan]

Peter,
This doesnt affect me as I saw this coming and dont hold any aim stocks with you, however you were my backup AIM spreadbet provider and I will now have to find a new one. I would like to say:

AIM stocks can have large spreads and are generally traded over months / years. I hold positions which have cost me hundreds to enter.

You have announced the closure of AIM stocks on 21st Jan 2010 to new business and are closing them on 11th Feb 2010. This does not give your customers a reasonable length of time to earn a return on their positions, or to make back the spread on these instruments. Consider someone who entered a position on 18th Jan, paying hundreds in spread, unless they are very lucky how can they ever hope to earn a return ?

I realise you sometimes need to close products / markets, but given the nature of your business I do not believe this is treating your customers well, surely a much longer time to roll off positions could be offered ?

I look forward to your response.

Rob

Good morning rj

Thanks for the post and taking the time.
We are de-listing the aim stocks on market maker because we wanted to focus on the core liquid markets, all of the major markets and we have started that process now. if you look at the way we automate the execution on next gen spread bet that means focusing on all the major liquid products. we need automated execution on precision pricing real time. we will have an extensive list of products on next gen which will cover all of the major markets. we will look at aim stocks etc for next gen but we are not there yet. will keep you updated.
thanks peter

 

[PC at CMC Markets]

hi rjmaha

Thanks for your post much appreciated. In short the answer is in principal yes we can extend the time period but of course every client has their own requirements and we would need to discuss the situation with each client individually. when the requests come in from each client we will look at them favourably.
thanks peter

Peter,
This doesnt affect me as I saw this coming and dont hold any aim stocks with you, however you were my backup AIM spreadbet provider and I will now have to find a new one. I would like to say:

AIM stocks can have large spreads and are generally traded over months / years. I hold positions which have cost me hundreds to enter.

You have announced the closure of AIM stocks on 21st Jan 2010 to new business and are closing them on 11th Feb 2010. This does not give your customers a reasonable length of time to earn a return on their positions, or to make back the spread on these instruments. Consider someone who entered a position on 18th Jan, paying hundreds in spread, unless they are very lucky how can they ever hope to earn a return ?

I realise you sometimes need to close products / markets, but given the nature of your business I do not believe this is treating your customers well, surely a much longer time to roll off positions could be offered ?

I look forward to your response.

Rob

 

[PC at CMC Markets]

Hi piphead

Because I do not know your individual circumstances I cannot comment on whether spread betting is possible for you. Please feel free to contact us to discuss your situation. regards peter

Thanks Peter,
I hope I can open one legaly because I already have a spread betting account with another firm
IG said I would have to use their italian branch which only deal in CFD's but to be honest I don't understand what CFD's were. To tell you the truth I don't trust italian companies -Too many horror stories! Guess I will have to read up if the answer is NO.
Cheers

 

[PC at CMC Markets]

hi jesteruk

not planning to offer guaranteed stops on next gen in short term but may consider it once we get through the current work load.

regards peter

Good afternoon Peter

Another quick question. Some of your competitors and also your own marketmaker platform appear to offer guaranteed stops for a spread of commission premium. Is this something you will be offering on the next gen platform soon?

 

[uchiki]

Peter,
The order entry is straightforward for entry limit, stop loss, and take profit limit. However, I do not like the predictive numbering when I key in a price. eg defaulted price is 1335.00 I highlight 35 and change to 23. By the time I've keyed the numbers in, my price is now 23 rather than 1323. If I highlight the whole price and key in 1323, then it works, but if there's the slightest delay after the first two digits, then the price is set to 13. This might work well for nimble games players/texters, but it just slows me down, as I'm sometimes having to key a price 2 or 3 times before what I want appears on screen.

With the draw tools eg trendline/channel, would be nice to be able to adjust the slope/width of an existing trendline. Dragging the ends of the lines just seems to zoom in/out of the chart.

 

[PC at CMC Markets]

hi uchiki

Yes I see what you mean about order entry. I just played with my demo account and when I tried to change the stop price to new stop price it kept defaulting back to the margin stop price. It does this because the margin stop price is real time and will adjust to the live market price making sure that the margin stop level is always maintained.

I spoke to the team and because it is real time margin stop loss it will keep changing and there is little they can do to slow it down as it has to be real time.

You have a couple of options.

1. execute your trade and leave the margin stop loss level as it is and the profit take level as it is and then when the trade is executed you can go into your positions folder and change stops and limits from there without the moving margin level
2. execute the trade without margin stop loss (one tick trading, you can enable this in preferences top right hand corner) and place your stops and profit take in same way as 1 above.

This material is for general information only and is not intended to provide trading or investment advice or any personal recommendations

Hope that helps and thanks for the useful post.

regards Peter

Peter,
The order entry is straightforward for entry limit, stop loss, and take profit limit. However, I do not like the predictive numbering when I key in a price. eg defaulted price is 1335.00 I highlight 35 and change to 23. By the time I've keyed the numbers in, my price is now 23 rather than 1323. If I highlight the whole price and key in 1323, then it works, but if there's the slightest delay after the first two digits, then the price is set to 13. This might work well for nimble games players/texters, but it just slows me down, as I'm sometimes having to key a price 2 or 3 times before what I want appears on screen.

With the draw tools eg trendline/channel, would be nice to be able to adjust the slope/width of an existing trendline. Dragging the ends of the lines just seems to zoom in/out of the chart.

 

[uchiki]

Peter, thanks for your reply.
The behaviour of the entry Limit, the Stop Loss and the Take Profit Limit is the same in that if you key say 2 digits of a 4 digit price, then pause (think) before entering the 3rd digit, the price is filled out based on the 2 digits you've entered. It is not replaced with a completely different price (eg recalc margin stop).
Once I have successfully entered a 4 digit price, it is retained and not overwritten by a different price.
I observed this functionality on a UK stock during market hours and also out of market hours (when margin stop would presumably not be changing).
Have also just checked it on a currency and a commodity.
If you enter a stop outside of the margin stop, you get messages flashing up, but the stop wasn't overwritten for me. The Take Profit Limit was overwritten if the auto-completed number was lower than the entry.
I think the problem is the auto-completing of the partial number you have entered eg 13 is auto completed to 13.00, when the full number I was entering was 1323.

Would be nice if there was an option to switch off the autocomplete or be able to configure a number of seconds delay.
The other thing I noticed was that if the current price was 4 digits before the point, you enter 13, pause, (auto-completed to 13.00), keep typing, the 2 appears ie 132.00, but you cannot enter any more digits before the point. Fixing this would alleviate the entry and stop loss.

Once I have completely entered the numbers, I can submit the order with stop and profit take in one go. I wouldn't want to do otherwise. No need to put the entry in with default stop/profit take or without either. Auto-complete is just an irritation that's likely to remain so.

Maybe you need someone in the test team that is a bit ponderous on the keyboard... !

hi uchiki

Yes I see what you mean about order entry. I just played with my demo account and when I tried to change the stop price to new stop price it kept defaulting back to the margin stop price. It does this because the margin stop price is real time and will adjust to the live market price making sure that the margin stop level is always maintained.

I spoke to the team and because it is real time margin stop loss it will keep changing and there is little they can do to slow it down as it has to be real time.

You have a couple of options.

1. execute your trade and leave the margin stop loss level as it is and the profit take level as it is and then when the trade is executed you can go into your positions folder and change stops and limits from there without the moving margin level
2. execute the trade without margin stop loss (one tick trading, you can enable this in preferences top right hand corner) and place your stops and profit take in same way as 1 above.

This material is for general information only and is not intended to provide trading or investment advice or any personal recommendations

Hope that helps and thanks for the useful post.

regards Peter

 

[PC at CMC Markets]

Good morning Mr Ponderous fingers.

Thanks for your time and effort to look at our platform. Really very much appreciated and your comments have been passed on to see if we can do anything with the auto-complete part of the ticket entry of stop losses.

I just did everything you said on my demo account and it worked as you described it. As explained before margin stop losses are real time. They have to adjust to the market price that is constantly changing. As the market price changes so does the margin stop loss because of the margin requirement for a particular trade based on the market price at the time. I will ask the team if they can slow this down or maybe delay the process by some extra seconds. Anyway lets see what they say. On another note I successfully changed the stop loss in the position window after I had entered a demo trade.

many thanks Peter

Peter, thanks for your reply.
The behaviour of the entry Limit, the Stop Loss and the Take Profit Limit is the same in that if you key say 2 digits of a 4 digit price, then pause (think) before entering the 3rd digit, the price is filled out based on the 2 digits you've entered. It is not replaced with a completely different price (eg recalc margin stop).
Once I have successfully entered a 4 digit price, it is retained and not overwritten by a different price.
I observed this functionality on a UK stock during market hours and also out of market hours (when margin stop would presumably not be changing).
Have also just checked it on a currency and a commodity.
If you enter a stop outside of the margin stop, you get messages flashing up, but the stop wasn't overwritten for me. The Take Profit Limit was overwritten if the auto-completed number was lower than the entry.
I think the problem is the auto-completing of the partial number you have entered eg 13 is auto completed to 13.00, when the full number I was entering was 1323.

Would be nice if there was an option to switch off the autocomplete or be able to configure a number of seconds delay.
The other thing I noticed was that if the current price was 4 digits before the point, you enter 13, pause, (auto-completed to 13.00), keep typing, the 2 appears ie 132.00, but you cannot enter any more digits before the point. Fixing this would alleviate the entry and stop loss.

Once I have completely entered the numbers, I can submit the order with stop and profit take in one go. I wouldn't want to do otherwise. No need to put the entry in with default stop/profit take or without either. Auto-complete is just an irritation that's likely to remain so.

Maybe you need someone in the test team that is a bit ponderous on the keyboard... !

 

[uchiki]

Haha Peter, I can type around half your speed, it's the thinking that's the slow part !
OK, let's see what they come back with.

The Performance indicators on the Libraries are a nice feature - switch between day, month etc. Be nice to have these on the Watchlist. Once a watchlist has been built, I doubt many people would look at the library.

Also, did you catch the comment about draw tools:
With the draw tools eg trendline/channel, would be nice to be able to adjust the slope/width of an existing trendline. Dragging the ends of the lines just seems to zoom in/out of the chart.

 

[PC at CMC Markets]

Hi uchiki

Regarding trend lines we will be adding more information like the length and angle of trend lines. For the moment the team said they will not be releasing adjustments etc but they will look at it later on. At the moment they are banging away with new charts, next gen cfd launch and some upgrades to next gen spread b etting.

There will be some additional tools on watch lists etc, However, once we get next gen out there on cfds and up grade of spread betting over coming weeks you will see all sorts of features. There is one feature that will give you a lot more capabilities but that is top secret at the moment. This will help with performance and volatility etc. watch this space.

really appreciate that you have had a good look at the platform. thank you so much.
thanks for the time you have taken to look at the platform and giving us such valuable feed back. Without feed back from clients we cannot improve as a company and every body here appreciates the time and comments you have posted.
regards Peter

Haha Peter, I can type around half your speed, it's the thinking that's the slow part !
OK, let's see what they come back with.

The Performance indicators on the Libraries are a nice feature - switch between day, month etc. Be nice to have these on the Watchlist. Once a watchlist has been built, I doubt many people would look at the library.

Also, did you catch the comment about draw tools:
With the draw tools eg trendline/channel, would be nice to be able to adjust the slope/width of an existing trendline. Dragging the ends of the lines just seems to zoom in/out of the chart.

 

[Ross Spur]

On a related note, the decimals are completely unnecessary when trying to set an order. To set a stop on US30, for instance, the distance away is set to two decimal places, and pressing the +/- moves the figure at a ridiculously slow rate, counting through hundredths of a point (that don't exist on the underlying future, anyway).

Just noticed that it only does the decimals if the order is added when you open the trade, not when modifying one already set?

 

[catracho]

Some suggestions (apologies if already brought up/suggested) for future updates to the system..

Alerts for levels on instruments
"Stop buy" "stop sell "order options
Hi Lo data on instrument
In History ability to filter for one specific instrument..

cheers

 

[PC at CMC Markets]

Hi Ross
Thanks for feed back will pass onto the team.
regards Peter

On a related note, the decimals are completely unnecessary when trying to set an order. To set a stop on US30, for instance, the distance away is set to two decimal places, and pressing the +/- moves the figure at a ridiculously slow rate, counting through hundredths of a point (that don't exist on the underlying future, anyway).

Just noticed that it only does the decimals if the order is added when you open the trade, not when modifying one already set?

 

[PC at CMC Markets]

Hi Catracho

Thanks for your posting and taking the time to look at the system.

You can already enter stop entry orders. When selecting the ticket to buy or sell select limit as the order type and enter the stop entry levels. You can enter buy or sell stops.
Hi/lo opening close data being built as we speak and will be in next release in next few weeks or so.
alerts being built
regarding history search this is good point and will pass it onto the team. However, you can select different products but not individually and group them together. you need to play around with history buttons a bit but you will see buy orders or sell orders or group products. not exactly what you suggested but cuts down search time.

hope that helps
regards Peter

Some suggestions (apologies if already brought up/suggested) for future updates to the system..

Alerts for levels on instruments
"Stop buy" "stop sell "order options
Hi Lo data on instrument
In History ability to filter for one specific instrument..

cheers

 

[arabianights]

didnt realise you liked bingo

it's my favourite, just after blue rinsing

 

[PC at CMC Markets]

ha ha ha

it's my favourite, just after blue rinsing