GFT UK Spreadbetting......

Looking at the demo, the software runs rings around ODL,it could do with a price ladder so that orders could be entered at a definate price to avoid the price changing whilst you press the button, so that you could enter one click limit orders for example
 
I've just downloaded the DealBook demo for SB. I like the interface, the charts look pretty good, and i like the fact that you can use a stop-loss and trailing stop-loss alongside each other.
 
Nut said:
Hi all

I read this thread with great interest as I have traded the markets for a considerable period of time, pre 1984. The history of spread betting is in my view anyway quite interesting as I understand it was simply a private gamble between professional traders just to spice up their lives. Somebody though had the idea to take this public and hence today we have the spread betting companies.

When spread betting initially hit the general public the companies involved at the time practiced some very dirty tricks indeed to rob their clients and indeed I fell foul of these myself to the point of vowing never to spread bet again.

The tricks employed included closing accounts of clients who were lucky enough to have a couple of winners. One of the most widely employed was filling orders way after the buy/sell button was pressed hence the trade took place just where you did not wish to trade ie support or resistance against your position.

Another trick was the widening of spreads by an extreme amount to trigger stops and limits, I once witnessed an entire bull market taken out and over a weekend!! The response of the company in question was basically "tough". I notice above an attachment showing a differnce of 6 pts, try a difference of 60pts as may have occured historically.

Now when we talk of delays in filling orders in terms of seconds well consider this, in the past the spread betting platforms would go down at crucial points in time ie fundemental announcements for perhaps three hours, once they had cleaned everybody out with wild swings which had not the slightest resemblance to true market activity then the platform would flash up again.

I could go on with this but really enough said, so lets consider today and GFT the original topic of this post.

As previously stated I vowed never to spread bet again, indeed someplace on this site perhaps that very thread still exists. However a friend suggested I try again as I was complaining about CGT, my inital reaction was some friend you are, I would rather make love to the tax man. He persisted and directed me to GFT.

I opened a small account so as to access their real time data, this I compared with my real time data feed from a seperate source and the differences are miniscle. Then I looked intentionally for wild spikes in the data and found none historically, still suspicious I tracked GFT forwards against the futures markets and once again no wild spikes. This left me with only the issue of fundemental announcements, and I must state that not once has the GFT platform gone down during announcements and volatile periods.

However still not 100% content I made a point of visiting GFT by attending one of their seminars and discussed my concerns directly with people there, the response was that GFT cannot afford the bad press as a result of underhand tactics, they are too big in the currency markets to risk the fallout that may ensue. Now of course they might well just be saying that but certainly I have had no reason since to doubt what they said.

So I am back spread betting with GFT and very happy indeed.

Their charting package is in my view is one of the best I have used this includes those on which I have spent a lot of money in the past. For me though it does have only one drawback as it's a web style platform the date axis stops at last data point. Not much use if you wish to project future points in time. This though is not a show stopper.

Gft's customer service I have found to be prompt, polite and effective. It has not been required that I tackle a serious point with them as none have occured.

So my overall my view is that if you wish to spreadbet then choose who you use with caution. The company that was once called Deal4Free and became known as Steal4Free is still out there.

Nut
Click to expand...

After everything I said above I have today had reports of GFT going down during some fairly hefty moves in the FX market, did anybody else experience this about 1PM ish, does anybody know if their forex platfom went down.

Thanks in advance
Nut
 
Hi Phil

The reports from other people which I mention above have not really been verified by myself, I now use GFT all day and every day, in the past two/three weeks I have lost connection perhaps twice and for only as long as it took me to log back in.
The system it'self is first rate.

Hope this helps
Nut
 
Nut said:
Hi Phil

The reports from other people which I mention above have not really been verified by myself, I now use GFT all day and every day, in the past two/three weeks I have lost connection perhaps twice and for only as long as it took me to log back in.
The system it'self is first rate.

Hope this helps
Nut
Click to expand...

Thanks, Nut. Those previous comments about slow speeds were a bit off-putting. How are the fills on indices and FX nowadays?
 
Any of you guys using GFT dealbook on vista? I tried the demo for 1month. It got very glitchy with errors if you use it with other applications. However if you report them, they try to fix it.
 
Yes it has bugs with vista ( the voice activation within Vista trying to come on) which they still haven't sorted and they don't like filling market orders over £10pp very quickly.
 
dealbook glitches

Has dealbook always been glitchy, or is it the arrival of vista and xp sp3 that has sent it glitchy? Or perhapps just me? Tried it on a laptop and pc and it's the same here.
I opened a demo account last week to see what it's like and seem to have spent a while finding and working around the glitches. Got 2 demos now - forex and s/bet and same on each.

The most common one is charts not appearing except for one moving bar on the left (time of bar random) . and the current price on the right with nowt in between. Seems to happen randomly - good runs then no show on charts. Tried it for the first time this morning to mark up charts (about 0730) and it took twice as long a ig realtime charts cos they just wouldn't appear sometimes.

Another bug is if a chart created and is undocked from the window, all the linked charts unlink themselves from the quoteboard. Bit of a bugger! Got quite adept at recreating them from templates.

Latest one this pm is fib studies moving themselves between opening/closing charts- can't make out if it's random or whether they're mirroring themselves - or both.

I also noticed that just after the US open this pm the platform slowed down terribly for a while as it did this morning around uk kick off.

And have you tried out their 'new' scale out order ticket? Either Andrew at gft and i have got the idea of the ticket completely wrong or it's completely buggered. It must be new as 2 gft people had never seen it ubtil i asked about it.

Seems odd if d/book has been around for a good time that it's still so buggy - unless it's just me, xp sp3 or the demo platform or gft needing to bung a bit more bandwidth or hardware in.

Got to say that in general gft has been pretty good at responding to queries. But they haven't got my real money as yet!

Cheers.

Graham.
 
blink said:
Has dealbook always been glitchy, or is it the arrival of vista and xp sp3 that has sent it glitchy? Or perhapps just me? Tried it on a laptop and pc and it's the same here.
I opened a demo account last week to see what it's like and seem to have spent a while finding and working around the glitches. Got 2 demos now - forex and s/bet and same on each.

The most common one is charts not appearing except for one moving bar on the left (time of bar random) . and the current price on the right with nowt in between. Seems to happen randomly - good runs then no show on charts. Tried it for the first time this morning to mark up charts (about 0730) and it took twice as long a ig realtime charts cos they just wouldn't appear sometimes.

Another bug is if a chart created and is undocked from the window, all the linked charts unlink themselves from the quoteboard. Bit of a bugger! Got quite adept at recreating them from templates.

Latest one this pm is fib studies moving themselves between opening/closing charts- can't make out if it's random or whether they're mirroring themselves - or both.

I also noticed that just after the US open this pm the platform slowed down terribly for a while as it did this morning around uk kick off.

And have you tried out their 'new' scale out order ticket? Either Andrew at gft and i have got the idea of the ticket completely wrong or it's completely buggered. It must be new as 2 gft people had never seen it ubtil i asked about it.

Seems odd if d/book has been around for a good time that it's still so buggy - unless it's just me, xp sp3 or the demo platform or gft needing to bung a bit more bandwidth or hardware in.

Got to say that in general gft has been pretty good at responding to queries. But they haven't got my real money as yet!

Cheers.

Graham.
Click to expand...


Hello graham

I have had no issues with DB360 other than at times charts can take a long time to load, particularly on longer time frames. I know nothing of this new dealing ticket. I shall have to investigate.

cheers
Nut
:cheesy:
 
Nut said:
Hello graham

I have had no issues with DB360 other than at times charts can take a long time to load, particularly on longer time frames. I know nothing of this new dealing ticket. I shall have to investigate.

cheers
Nut
:cheesy:
Click to expand...

I too am happy to report that as yet i have only encountered 1 issue with gft which is a freak and so far am happy with the way it is being dealt with. as for slow fills at sizes that has not happened here no problem filling dow/ftse/dax at 20 quid per point.

i recommend them and if people want to contact me i can give you the number of the guy who i deal with there as he is first class.
 
blink said:
Has dealbook always been glitchy, or is it the arrival of vista and xp sp3 that has sent it glitchy? Or perhapps just me? Tried it on a laptop and pc and it's the same here.
I opened a demo account last week to see what it's like and seem to have spent a while finding and working around the glitches. Got 2 demos now - forex and s/bet and same on each.

The most common one is charts not appearing except for one moving bar on the left (time of bar random) . and the current price on the right with nowt in between. Seems to happen randomly - good runs then no show on charts. Tried it for the first time this morning to mark up charts (about 0730) and it took twice as long a ig realtime charts cos they just wouldn't appear sometimes.


Graham.
Click to expand...

I've had that chart problem when changing between tfs. Something to do with memory, possibly?

Anyone else trade from charts and find that orders don't drag & drop properly? Drives me mad!
 
Stop lines

Phil Mibbutz said:
I've had that chart problem when changing between tfs. Something to do with memory, possibly?

Anyone else trade from charts and find that orders don't drag & drop properly? Drives me mad!
Click to expand...

You're not the only one - I tried a couple of orders last night - was trying to move my stop closer and the line just kept flicking up then back down again and no confirmation pop up appearing. Stop wasn't too close either. Almost felt that there was someone the other end grabbing it and pulling it back down - oh no you're not - oh yes I am:)

However, I'm playing right now and it seems to work ok. Think that you have to make sure the line is selected first then read the confirmation pop up window carefully as sometimes the line marking the stop has flicked back to where it was but the confirmation window is showing the correct details.

Strange that there isn't a 'close at market'' option on the right click on the chart.

BTW - what's a tf?

Cheers.

Graham.
 
dealbook version

Thought I'd better mention that I'm on dealbook version 2.11.4.12.9, 20/6/2008. Downloaded from the US site.
Using XP with SP3.

Just in case the later versions of dealbook have actually got some bugs built in or it doesn't like SP3. A few progs don't like SP3 apparently as it's got some vista type bits in it.

Cheers.

Graham.
 
GFTUK is the demo really demonstrative?

Hallo,
I have the demo of DealBook 360 (GFTUK) installed since a few days. The demo seems to work fine for spread betting. Today, during the last 15 minutes of the US markets (heavy activity I suppose) I did several operations on the S&P500 index with a reasonably fast execution (around 3 seconds in the worst case, but this is acceptable considering the volume of activity). They were all market orders, spread betting.

Before opening an account, I would like to know if the real trading is as fast as with the demo (most transactions reported in around 1 second) or if the demo is fast and the real trading is not. So anybody using GFTUK please report on execution speed during congestion times, it will be appreciated.

Also a representative (who wanted my phone numbers, did not manage to have it, and redirected me to the technical office and the trade desk for some questions I asked him) told me that $2500 are necessary to open an account. A person on the "chat" of their web site, Alicia, yesterday "said" $500 (normally would not make a big difference but these days almost all my liquidity is invested in shares and some margin as well, I am a "true believer", but I don't want to increase my margin to open an account, 'cos you know the market can stay irrational longer than I can stay solvent :smart:).

Is there a cost to withdraw money? If I change my mind after trying the real working for a while, will it cost me? Their site is not very transparent on many such details.

In general, good and bad feedback on GFTUK is appreciated. There are not many on this site. One reports awful execution times, but does not report which machine was used and if the problem persisted (DealBook seems to be quite heavy an application, besides, today QuoteTracker did very strange things with my data flow from TDAmeritrade, which is usually reliable and solid, so the occasional glitch can happen everywhere).

Thanks
Fabrizio
 
Incerto said:
Hallo,
I have the demo of DealBook 360 (GFTUK) installed since a few days. The demo seems to work fine for spread betting. Today, during the last 15 minutes of the US markets (heavy activity I suppose) I did several operations on the S&P500 index with a reasonably fast execution (around 3 seconds in the worst case, but this is acceptable considering the volume of activity). They were all market orders, spread betting.

Before opening an account, I would like to know if the real trading is as fast as with the demo (most transactions reported in around 1 second) or if the demo is fast and the real trading is not. So anybody using GFTUK please report on execution speed during congestion times, it will be appreciated.

Also a representative (who wanted my phone numbers, did not manage to have it, and redirected me to the technical office and the trade desk for some questions I asked him) told me that $2500 are necessary to open an account. A person on the "chat" of their web site, Alicia, yesterday "said" $500 (normally would not make a big difference but these days almost all my liquidity is invested in shares and some margin as well, I am a "true believer", but I don't want to increase my margin to open an account, 'cos you know the market can stay irrational longer than I can stay solvent :smart:).

Is there a cost to withdraw money? If I change my mind after trying the real working for a while, will it cost me? Their site is not very transparent on many such details.

In general, good and bad feedback on GFTUK is appreciated. There are not many on this site. One reports awful execution times, but does not report which machine was used and if the problem persisted (DealBook seems to be quite heavy an application, besides, today QuoteTracker did very strange things with my data flow from TDAmeritrade, which is usually reliable and solid, so the occasional glitch can happen everywhere).

Thanks
Fabrizio
Click to expand...

I have been doing a few trades in S&P and Dow, reqouted about 50% of time in fast/volatile market which doesn't happen with IB when trading the YM or ES.

They are hopeless for US Stocks, fills take ages, but to be fair they say their strength is indicies and FX although their spreads are probably amoungst the high end spreadbetting firms.

In my view they are no different from IG/Worldspreads etc in terms of performance

They screwed me once on a FTSE trade when they took over a minute to fill a stop I had on their platform which triggered 6 seconds before a news release, so instant fills are not always a given, especially on stops

The problem I find with spreadbettors is that when a stop fires they usually have a somebody who checks the validity of the price before filling the stop order, in fast moving markets this can cause delays and bad fills, once again this doesn't happen with DMA electronic trading.

GFT platform looks great but it has issues , especially on Vista, where it is nowhere as stable as I would like although it hasn't been a real big problem , yet.

Their technical support/customer service is a bit pants as well, especially when it comes to bad ticks on their charts which can distort the entire chart e.f S&P open 8035 high 8035 Low 795 close 796.

I was told to call the trading desk when i picked up this problem.

Overall I am indifferent about them , they have their pros and cons just like any other spreadbettor
 
I tried the demo account and execution times were very good but when i opened an account with them for real the execution times were much much slower - about 10 times slower!!!. I asked them why this was but they could not give me an answer. After one day of trading with them i withdrew my money and closed the account - they did not charge me anything for this. In all honesty i felt cheated by the whole thing - my advice would be to steer well clear. I use IG Index now and their execution times are good and i haven't really had any problems with them.
 
sdev4321 said:
I tried the demo account and execution times were very good but when i opened an account with them for real the execution times were much much slower - about 10 times slower!!!. I asked them why this was but they could not give me an answer. After one day of trading with them i withdrew my money and closed the account - they did not charge me anything for this. In all honesty i felt cheated by the whole thing - my advice would be to steer well clear. I use IG Index now and their execution times are good and i haven't really had any problems with them.
Click to expand...

Sounds like everything must be going through a dealer. Did this apply with large stake sizes, or generally? I thought platform speed was one of the things they boast about?
 
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