Smart Live Markets - Spread Bet on MT4

Billibollox said:
"This poses a question. Do they really manage to fund the high cost of maintaining an office, run expensive servers and pay the salaries of dozens/hundreds of staff just on a couple of pips spread on each trade? From a recent conversation with an ex-employee of such an organisation, the answer would have to be a resounding "No"."

Interesting Alan.

Assuming that the people that set up such an organisation have that same knowledge, is it then fair to assume that 'cheating' is part of their initial business plan?
Click to expand...

We'd all hate to think that but, according to him, they, deliberately, target, and trade against, the smaller sized accounts (under £5,000). It seems that the Financial Ombudsman won't spend much time investigating a claim of broker cheating from someone who has lost £1,000

Evidence, of this type of unethical activity, formed the basis of the NFA action against Gain Capital. For all their clients who believed that they were trading on a level playing field, that belief was shattered. I suspect that there may be other types of "trade against the client" software out there, apart from Virtual Dealer.
 
Billi poses an interesting question - Alan do you think it is plausible that, say people worked at a company like FXCM who didn't award positive slippage intended or not (who subsequently got caught and fined) then go onto another company, carry on those malpractices?

There has to be a probability? non?
 
francisfinley said:
Billi poses an interesting question - Alan do you think it is plausible that, say people worked at a company like FXCM who didn't award positive slippage intended or not (who subsequently got caught and fined) then go onto another company, carry on those malpractices?

There has to be a probability? non?
Click to expand...

Of course it's a probability.

When I'm next at a trading exhibition, and there are SB Co reps there, I'm going to ask why I never get slipped, requoted or, stops hit to the exact 5th decimal point, on demo account. Strangely enough, it happens on live account all the time.

This whole business warrants a public enquiry before a House of Commons select committee. We may then get a fair and equitable system with proper regulation.
 
Ross Spur said:
Some share prices not available until 40m after the open.
Click to expand...

(n) Not good

Currencies are currently all working so i'm not affected thank god.

Have you called them up to ask why?

I dont think this thread will ever get to a joint agreement about this company. I trade a few thousand with them so naturally I am worried when I read the negative posts on here.

I cannot say that I, personally have ever had a problem though. I have never suffered any slippage or (from what I have seen) suspicious stop hunting. I do however only trade with POs and never market.

The only issue I have experienced with them is the server outage last week which I have already expressed my distaste to.

This is from my personal experience with GKFX. Francis has raised a couple of points which do concern me. The slippage in the fat finger trade is large and well beyond the normal slippage 'acceptable' levels in this game. The fact they didnt honour the trade is perhaps because they are a spreadbetting company.... Alpari and Oanda are not. If I had been in that trade of course I would be fuming too but perhaps this is something we have to put up when using a SB firm.

Alan, the info from the ex employee has intrigued me. Technically we're safer if we have a larger account? I would have thought the larger account holders would be the one they would target! Perhaps not then.

I still am not convinced they hunt stops, someone show me some proof to convince me please!
 
I have placed 7 trades on a live account this morning--5 wins 2 losses. Not huge. but enough.
2 trades came within 2 pips of my stop and turned.
Reading these threads it seems obvious that different people have different expectations from S.Betting.
Retail punters are never going to get the same market conditions that the institutions receive but its not far off. The amounts we trade are miniscule in comparison and I for one am quite happy with
my trading for the most part. Sure there are the odd moments but its part and parcel of being smallfry. I`ve traded DMA and futures,options etc over the years but actually make my living primarily from spreadbetting as I like the platforms I use and the ease of info.
Scalping on a sb platform is asking for trouble and always has been. Personally I think they`ve improved vastly over the years and hope it continues in that direction.
just my opinions for what its worth.
 
Whats the alternative though?

I have yet to find a company on here that everyone praises in unison. That includes SB firms and direct/ecn!

I think all we can do is accept the risks involved and make sure we're protected in the best way we can.

I had 2 very dodgy looking trades last week where price spiked down and took my stops out in a most unusual way. I checked each candle against my Alpari live account & FXCM and guess what, they were identical! Still have seen no proof on the stop hunting theory. Slippage is a concern but what can we do about that, all of them do it to an extent.
 
my post above is not an attack on anybody-just an opinion. 10 years ago ( ish) there were hardly any retail "traders" and those that were , were playing with stocks. Now it seems everyone wants to be a trader. Seems to me we`ve come a long way being able to trade currencies and indices with 50p or whatever.
lecture over :)
 
the answer for me was to segregate risk over upto half a dozen accounts ( i have quite a few accounts now!) - don't put all your eggs in one basket. It also gives you a good feel for who is raping you - my stuff is automated (if you are on MT4 you should make some headway to get at least semi-auto) so i can see differences through myfxbook (lies a bit at times) and the excel sheets i go through each week fairly easily...

On my server and my laptop im recording everything which is handy, every time a bot takes a trade it takes a screendump too in case the video cocks up.

As you can see recently - this doesn't mean everything is rosy and works out - I was chatting to someone about what happened and if I had lost money I would have been really, really, pissed off.
 
alan5616 said:
We'd all hate to think that but, according to him, they, deliberately, target, and trade against, the smaller sized accounts (under £5,000). It seems that the Financial Ombudsman won't spend much time investigating a claim of broker cheating from someone who has lost £1,000

Evidence, of this type of unethical activity, formed the basis of the NFA action against Gain Capital. For all their clients who believed that they were trading on a level playing field, that belief was shattered. I suspect that there may be other types of "trade against the client" software out there, apart from Virtual Dealer.
Click to expand...

Open question (to myself as well as anybody else).

How can they target smaller sized accounts without it impacting the larger ones as well? I guess I'd pose the same question about stop hunting

.....buggered if I know tbh
 
Trading Gurus said:
So, so - Ray the Random Robot Finally Comes a Cropper

Cheers,

Jim
Click to expand...


have you looked at the indo run and cable run setups - they made sure it wouldnt go over say 8 levels (when you are approaching higher levels it banks some profit) of MG and nowhere near news events - that would ultimately f them on every strat run.

what if you just pulled 50% of the equity every friday and at the end of the month? you know you will get a dinosaur extinction event every so often so you cannot rely on it compounding everything - its the same for manual traders - they will blow the account at some point.

im just not a fan of MG so have very low pip generating bots but as an average together they produce a healthy profit.
What I have started to do is put counter trenders against the trenders and average out that way - if you can get the counter trenders half working they are bloody brilliant - the key here is SL and making sure when the market does trend you are either hedged via a trender or that SL does kick in - not the way people on forexfactory or ray do it via martingale.. it will end in tears unless you bank it every week.

consistency eh.
 
Billibollox said:
Open question (to myself as well as anybody else).

How can they target smaller sized accounts without it impacting the larger ones as well? I guess I'd pose the same question about stop hunting

.....buggered if I know tbh
Click to expand...

Think that answers the question to be honest. If there is to be manipulation it has to be global otherwise we'd all have different charts!
 
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