Interactive Investor (www.iii.co.uk)

[RandomWraith]

Hi All,

Has anyone used Interactive Investors for SB or CFD trading? If you have were they good/bad/indifferent?

They claim a number of awards, but then so does every other provider (which by the majority of SB comments at least suggests they are meaningless).

Unfortunately their demo account is currently out of action so you cant test their platform out, but they are offering £100 start-up bonus - may be worth a punt?

Thanks

RW

 

[RandomWraith]

Well, I duly signed up for a spread betting account and received my £100 a few days later. I'm new to this game so I can't provide a comparison with other brokerages.

It seems that they are subsidiary of city index as many of the trading tools (plotting etc) have a city index url. The trading system is nice (my only other experience is ig CFD trial). One downside is that it's completely flash driven, so you could have trouble on unix based platforms. Trading is simple and clickable. Not as good as ig where you can expand each market, with iii you have to search for your product so that can be time consuming, but at least there are multiple watch lists available for this. Better than ig in that the trade box is not floating and closing out a position is again two-click, once on the position and once on the sell/buy.

Prices mark up as indicative in a fast market so it may be that they are trying address the slippage complaints, by at least giving some warning. I can't say for sure as I've not tried and trade entry/exit in this scenario.

No trailing stops with the spread betting account. Margins might be high too, I was getting £20 margin for a short 10p UKX index bet.

Can't think of anything else at the minute.

Cheers,

Martin

 

[RandomWraith]

Ok, Interactive Investor (Free Portfolio, Share dealing, ISAs, PEPs, SIPPs, CFDs, Spread betting - Interactive Investor) is definitely part of City Index as the statements I receive are from City Index! How the two compare I have no idea.

Slippage: Well I've had some on opening a position, but not when trying to close. Having said that when the market is moving fast you may not make a trade unless your price is hit. The system pops up a window saying as much. The other downer is that you have to close positions individually, one at a time, which isn't so good if you've got several positions need a fast close.

Cheers,

RW

 

[megamuel]

Hi Martin, I am with Interactive Investor too and yes the platform is supplied by city index. Like you I am new to this too so have nothing to compare with but I am happy with the platform. Don't know how the spreads compare. Only things I don't like - you can't open up 2 charts for the same index/stock/etc (for viewing 2 time frames at the same time), if you click to open another chart it just refreshes the current one, it means you have to keep switching between time frames and then re adjusting the chart to how you were previously viewing it which can be times consuming. Also I have emailed with a few questions on seperate occasions and had to either wait a long time for a response or have not had one at all. I guess I could have called them if it was that important but still, they should have got back to me. Everything seems ok I guess. Its just me being rubbish at trading that is the problem! Oh and they don't offer FTSE 250 or 350 indicies, only FTSE 100 athough they offer all FTSE 350 stocks I think. Is that strange?

Sam.

 

[RandomWraith]

Thanks for the reply Sam, I was beginning to think I was the only one using iii!

Have had any time outs or trouble logging in? I've found it impossible on two occasions to log in around the FTSE open and a couple of times I've lost connection during the day for 1 or 2 seconds, but this hasn't cost me anything luckily.

I would say it's a little odd not to offer FTSE 250.

Martin