VDM Markets - upto £500 cash back offer

[springheeledjack]

I phoned VDM the other day to ask for clarification on the "we match 20% of your initial deposit up to £1000 against losses" offer, as I was thinking about depositing £5000 to get the £1000 offset offer.

Two odd things emerged.

1. The guy at VDM told me that the £1000 is NOT against netted-off losses, it is against losses absolute. I ran through the following hypothetical example with him to check my understanding:

i.e you deposit £5000.

You trade 10 times.

You lose 8 x £125 per trade = £1000 total losses.
You win 2 x £600 per trade = £1200 total gains.

Account balance = £5200

VDM tell me that I can claim £1000 against the losses, regardless of the fact that my account is in a net profit position.

Now, I've taken advantage of these offers before and the claim has always been against the NETTED-OFF position -my account would have to be in debit to claim anything. That would make this offer unique in my experience of spread betting.

2. I can only claim if the sum of my losses EQUALS or EXCEEDS £1000. If the sum of my losses is a penny below £1000 I can claim nothing. This seems bizarre, as it would imply that if I was sitting close to £1000 losses, it would pay me to deliberately lose another trade to get the loss up to £1000 so that I can then claim.

Now, I have a generally sceptical nature, and I'm very wary of offers that are so ambigously worded that I need to phone up the company to check what they mean. I can just imagine several weeks down the line trying to claim under the terms of this offer and the company moving the goalposts and saying "Ah, it didn't mean that, it actually meant..."

I'm also suspicious of offers that are completely out--of-kilter with the rest of the marketplace. Why?

Finally, I think offers are generally worthless unless you have reasonable faith in the integrity of the company involved: if the website is slow, or goes down, or they requote all the time, or spike prices down to take out your stops, then it's pointless opening an account no matter what the offer is. I'd want to see a little more customer feedback before they get my £5K.

Let the buyer beware, as they say

 

[Phil Mibbutz]

Interesting, springheeledjack. (1) seems to conflict with what I was told when I queried the original Match Credit offer, and I thought he T&Cs for the latest 20% version were tighter.
I agree with Mike Yass that SB cos should concentrate on providing a better service rather than bribing a few punters to open accounts, who promptly go elsewhere when the free money supply has dried up.
VDM's platform does seem to work very quickly, with no requotes or rejections, but the variable spreads on indices are a bit off-putting. While this may the same in the underlying market, it's not normal for SB, and you wonder whether it results in automatic slippage, as MikeY suggested. Exiting with stop/limit orders should help, though.

 

[chilltrader]

They seem like a very pushy outfit to me (got a sales guy calling me the other day), and the customer service chap always seems to be angry and pissed off!!

Anyone got the same impression?

 

[springheeledjack]

The bottom line is, there are no gifts in this world.

Imagine you walked down the high street and there was a foreign-owned bank you'd never heard of offering 20% interest on deposits. Would you rush to give them your money? Not likely.

This 20% offer undoubtedly has a price attached, even if it's not immediately obvious. It could be something as simple as slightly wider spreads, fewer staff to answer the phone, or something less obvious like the SB company being less well-capitalised, having greater hidden risk exposure, providing less security for your deposits than elsewhere.

I hope I am never in this position, but can you imagine trying to recover assets from a SB company that's gone belly up? It's not going to be like reclaiming cash deposits in Nat West or Skipton Building Society. I can imagine it would take months and months to sort out.

 

[Phil Mibbutz]

Despite my general distrust of SB companies, I don't think there has to be anything devious about these account opening offers. More likely it's just that they know the vast majority of punters will blow the 'free money', sooner or later.

 

[MikeYass]

Despite my general distrust of SB companies, I don't think there has to be anything devious about these account opening offers. More likely it's just that they know the vast majority of punters will blow the 'free money', sooner or later.

And then lots of their own cash as well!

 

[gle101]

And then lots of their own cash as well!

Yes, but I guess better to first blow free money, isnt it?

 

[gc1]

Has anybody tried opening a live account yet ?

On the DEMO platform I notice that:

On the rolling currencies although the prices on most are quoted to 4 decimal places the fill prices have 5 decimal places.

When a "take profit" limit order is executed if the price moved straight through the limit price the fill price is better than the limit price (most SB companies only fill you at your limit price in these circumstances).

I wonder if the live platform behaves the same or differently.

 

[2be]

Has anybody tried opening a live account yet ?

On the DEMO platform I notice that:

On the rolling currencies although the prices on most are quoted to 4 decimal places the fill prices have 5 decimal places.

When a "take profit" limit order is executed if the price moved straight through the limit price the fill price is better than the limit price (most SB companies only fill you at your limit price in these circumstances).

I wonder if the live platform behaves the same or differently.

Until the last Fri their executon was OK ish, bit of lag, but not too much. Then on Friday I wnted to close a multientry position and was not able to do so for some time. Eventually after several attempts and with some diminished profits I was able to close it. In the past I was able to close trades with more profits that on that particular occassion, but for whatever reasons it was their system that prevented this trade to be closed at the point that I wanted to do so. I have phonned them, and they have addmitted to me that there was a problem with their system/software and that they are working to mend it. I have phonned them today and was assurred that this was a one off incident and it has been resolved. I would say, that this platform is not the best one for scalping, but a for biggerscalps (30 -100 pips) where the 5 pips either way wont harm you, or for mid term trades it should be ok. Every market maker takes some advantage and VDM is not exception. They have given me some extra spread (£700.00) and that alone has generated good profits. Their platform is a bit complecated esp for newbes, it is quite laborious to set your own SL and PT, and on a multientry positions it is abit of mouse clickking. If one can live with it the account shall produce good yield, subject of having discipline and reasonable trading strategy.
I shall trade tomorrow and see how the system works.

 

[Phil Mibbutz]

Until the last Fri their executon was OK ish, bit of lag, but not too much. Then on Friday I wnted to close a multientry position and was not able to do so for some time. Eventually after several attempts and with some diminished profits I was able to close it. In the past I was able to close trades with more profits that on that particular occassion, but for whatever reasons it was their system that prevented this trade to be closed at the point that I wanted to do so. I have phonned them, and they have addmitted to me that there was a problem with their system/software and that they are working to mend it. I have phonned them today and was assurred that this was a one off incident and it has been resolved. I would say, that this platform is not the best one for scalping, but a for biggerscalps (30 -100 pips) where the 5 pips either way wont harm you, or for mid term trades it should be ok. Every market maker takes some advantage and VDM is not exception. They have given me some extra spread (£700.00) and that alone has generated good profits. Their platform is a bit complecated esp for newbes, it is quite laborious to set your own SL and PT, and on a multientry positions it is abit of mouse clickking. If one can live with it the account shall produce good yield, subject of having discipline and reasonable trading strategy.
I shall trade tomorrow and see how the system works.

Although the varying spreads aren't ideal, in terms of speed VDM has been excellent for me so far, inc Friday. Can't really agree about the platform being complicated, either. It's just different, I'd say, but could do with a few modifications.
Incidentally, 30-100pips is a helluva scalp!

 

[2be]

Although the varying spreads aren't ideal, in terms of speed VDM has been excellent for me so far, inc Friday. Can't really agree about the platform being complicated, either. It's just different, I'd say, but could do with a few modifications.
Incidentally, 30-100pips is a helluva scalp!

I usually like to set SL and PT after entry has been done, and to do so one has to open two different widows, not a great deal, gets a bit more complicated with multiple entries, and that is the reason that I trade only one market at a time on that platform. Untill my experience on Fri the speed has been ok, though sometimes lagging a bit, (as expected). On the whole I am optimistic about VDM and are taking good profits with them. The way they "manipulate " the price is often very insightfull, if one is well position in the market. I am not too boderred about it, at least they are able to get a few pips more to pay me. So far I only had 2 loosing trades with them, so I should like the platform. CMC and saxo have very fast execution, IG so so, fxcm is fast too after choosing the best market price option, and Alpari, well it is Alpari .co .uk, I use them to keep me awake waiting for a set up. But here it is, VDM is OK ish, especially when they provide funds to make your profits that little bigger!
I call scalp a trade made on M5 to M15 to H1, using momentum cycles and on G/U it often produces more than 100 pips. My mid term trades are usually lasting few days based on Delta, EW and Fibs. For edium term trades and for that type of scalping VDM is fine, but for 10 pips scalp I wander.
Anyway, interesting time for indexes and fx tomorrow.
Wishing all many good trades on VDM platform including!
2be

 

[trader_dante]

I've had quite a few problems with VDM that I have never had with any other SB company.

Firstly, been getting quite a bit of slippage taking positions that are not even slipped in the underlying. (e.g. Bund) I'm a swing trader so a few ticks/pips here and there is not important but it is annoying and if you are on at big size it all adds up for them.

The other day I had a stop order disappear whilst I was in a trade so I had to exit at market. If I had been out, it could have been nasty.

Last night, I realised that when they go "phone only" you cannot even amend any existing orders which I think is pretty bad. I had to exit a position at 3am and only through luck was I able to get out at the price I wanted by the time I had given my account number, name, date of birth, address and told them what position I had open and what I wanted to do.

VDM have contacted me- refunded some of the more excessive slippage (one was 7 pips in Eur/Usd) and told me that the stop disapperance was due to a software glitch and they refunded the excess loss I took on that from exiting at market.

So - good customer service when you ring up with a complaint with "unfair" losses being refunded.

But having to ring up with complaints in the first place...?

 

[tar]

what did u expect from them , they r born yesterday ...

 

[gle101]

I've had quite a few problems with VDM that I have never had with any other SB company.

Firstly, been getting quite a bit of slippage taking positions that are not even slipped in the underlying. (e.g. Bund) I'm a swing trader so a few ticks/pips here and there is not important but it is annoying and if you are on at big size it all adds up for them.

The other day I had a stop order disappear whilst I was in a trade so I had to exit at market. If I had been out, it could have been nasty.

Last night, I realised that when they go "phone only" you cannot even amend any existing orders which I think is pretty bad. I had to exit a position at 3am and only through luck was I able to get out at the price I wanted by the time I had given my account number, name, date of birth, address and told them what position I had open and what I wanted to do.

VDM have contacted me- refunded some of the more excessive slippage (one was 7 pips in Eur/Usd) and told me that the stop disapperance was due to a software glitch and they refunded the excess loss I took on that from exiting at market.

So - good customer service when you ring up with a complaint with "unfair" losses being refunded.

But having to ring up with complaints in the first place...?

Thanks for the feedback. Yes VDM have to get these problem fixed very fast. Being a fairly new player, they need to do better than most in order to compete. Very good that they acknowledge these problems. I don't se a problem that you have to call them to get a refund, as long as they are improving the service as a result of your complaint.

 

[gle101]

what did u expect from them , they r born yesterday ...

How do you come to this assumption, please elaborate.

 

[tar]

How do you come to this assumption, please elaborate.

correct me if i am wrong , they r new to SB and CFD trading , the company was founded at 2007 , i am not talking about Van der Moolen although they r making losses the last 3 years ...

 

[gle101]

correct me if i am wrong , they r new to SB and CFD trading , the company was founded at 2007 , i am not talking about Van der Moolen although they r making losses the last 3 years ...

So you are implying they are in the game to milk their clients? I think today, with forums like this, you will not get very far with this kind of plan, in this highly competitive industry. Hopefully I am not proven to be wrong.

 

[tar]

So you are implying they are in the game to milk their clients? I think today, with forums like this, you will not get very far with this kind of plan, in this highly competitive industry. Hopefully I am not proven to be wrong.

No i dont mean this , but they r here to make profits from the spread and also from clients losses , all firms want this , some of them play games to increase their edge against the clients ...

 

[2be]

So you are implying they are in the game to milk their clients? I think today, with forums like this, you will not get very far with this kind of plan, in this highly competitive industry. Hopefully I am not proven to be wrong.

Milking or not milking, over 95% of clients will give them money, as they trade with little discipline, but the real issue is with the little minority who are actually taking profits, and many firms and I suppose VDM including is not too happy to share their spoil with them. That is why the newbies are likely to experience little problems with the trading platform, as they part with their money fast and furious, but it might be a different situation if one is taking profits regularly. I am watching VDM performance atm, and have linked these problems to the system being still worked on, as that is what has been said when I phonned the customer department. By the way it does not sound good if you cannot change the orders made by phone, it is probably the only company with such a policy. What about establishing new SL if the market goes in your favour?
I do expect market manipulation by the market maker, but to a degree, all of them do so, but after survivg the jump without a parashute, it is painful to die being bitten by a wild animal with a snout.
I am watching VDM performance closely to make my mind if it is not too big ordeal to stay with them.

 

[gle101]

Milking or not milking, over 95% of clients will give them money, as they trade with little discipline, but the real issue is with the little minority who are actually taking profits, and many firms and I suppose VDM including is not too happy to share their spoil with them. That is why the newbies are likely to experience little problems with the trading platform, as they part with their money fast and furious, but it might be a different situation if one is taking profits regularly. I am watching VDM performance atm, and have linked these problems to the system being still worked on, as that is what has been said when I phonned the customer department. By the way it does not sound good if you cannot change the orders made by phone, it is probably the only company with such a policy. What about establishing new SL if the market goes in your favour?
I do expect market manipulation by the market maker, but to a degree, all of them do so, but after survivg the jump without a parashute, it is painful to die being bitten by a wild animal with a snout.
I am watching VDM performance closely to make my mind if it is not too big ordeal to stay with them.

We all know about SB, they are market makers and the spread is their livelihood. I agree, they all play some kind of games or bias against us. I would say some more or less, depending on the spread they offer. However, from my observation through the years trading with SB, it is definitely getting tougher for SB to enroll in these activities. The competition is increasing and the clients are getting well informed and more sophisticated.

Problems with certain platform issues, is bound to appear with a fairly new platform. Hopfully they will correct these problem as time goes by. If not, clients will just move on to another SB.