IG

IG

A great easy platform

I have used IGIndex for years now and they have made some chages for the better. There charts are the best and I use their charts for my technical analysis (although you should have a seperate software for in depth analysis like metastock) as the are presented quickly and without crashing or slowing things down. One of the easiest yet complete (not babyish or primative... still looks professional and sophisticated) platforms out there... and one of the bigges and longest running.
Straight Up

IG are absolutely superb, good range of markets, smart platform with good charts and a lot of good research, but most importantly excellent customer service. Any problems I've ever had (including a gross error on rolling a position) have been resolved promptly and without question. Big thumbs up.
Probably best CFD provider ...

If you use L2, know what you are doing, and trade in decent size, IG is the place to be.

You can negotiate commissions - even at small trade size levels (I did).

Largest universe of US stocks for CFD provider.

Decent customer service.

When you trade with IG(DMA) you are trading in the market, buying and selling for their account, but IG is writing you a CFD contract. They are not trading against you as a quote driven provide would be doing(CMC)
Excellent Service

Had a small issue with closing a position, one quick phone call and a review of the recorded conversation and my complaint was upheld, you cannnt say fairer than that.
Price difference

Much differnce between the price shown and the price given after execution
not so great

have used ig intermittently, have a good platform but very poor service afterwards. they will change spreads always to your disadvantage, can often be up to 15 points diff between price shown and the one actually given to you when you have placed an order
A good outfit.

I actually rate IG. I think their platform makes for easy trading, customer service are competent and the spreads - while not the best in the world - do not suffer from requotes.
Aviod!! Sharks at work

Ruthless skulduggery will fleece the uninitiated and green traders quicker than you can learn to avoid the platform with delays in getting back to you, platform freezes, distracting binery bets which are incredible fun but dont belong in an environment where making money should be a serious goal.. You are trading against a bookie.. you are not gaining access to the markets through a broker so be on guard.. Ultimately I became so fed up with the descrepancies between prices shown and prices represented from solid dependable sources that the only option I had was to stop using spreadbetting firms altogether... add to all that lockups, lockouts, freezes and graphs that are frankly weak and inacurate and youll agree that they must make a lot of money.. question is are you the mug from whom they will make it?... PS & dont even consider day Trading using IG let alone any other spreadbetting firm.. step away from the download take yourself more seriously.. its your money..
Not a fan...

I have used IG on and off for 7 years but will not continue to do so.

Their service has always been shoddy when I have had a problem and they recently did me out of a large sum on a non-guaranteed stop.

I had a stop on cable and the market moved about 50 points in approx 2 mins. My stop was hit but I was taken out 40 points below the stop level. There was no gap (cable rarely gaps that far) and there were over a dozen ticks between the points.

When I called to point out that the difference between my stop and the level they took me out at was several grand apart I got some dopey dealer offering to put me through to the FX desk. The FX desk just said 'well, that is where we got out'.

I fail to see why their slow, and presumably manual, hedging should cost me so much money.

I think that the new management must be letting things slip.

Poor show - have emptied my account and spread it across a few competitors.
Not good

There are better firms such as findspreads, wordspreads, and capitalspreads, avoid deal4free.com igindex.com

igindex sales team actually know the difficulties of first time traders and shortfalls of their system, they refused to open me an account in order to protect me, they did reveal the real risks of spread betting and that it can make me broke. They don't allow you to open an account unless you are working full time, good advice on one hand. I suggest finspreads.com betting as little as 1p for all first timers.

Bad fills are a reallity not only with igindex but with deal4free.com too, bad fills, slipage, unexecuted orders, all become apparent on big stakes. deal4free also move the spread to your disadvantage for stakes over 20! These facts become apparent on big stakes only!

Don't be ready to give a broker a good rating based on trading with stakes under a few .
Use with caution

I have used IG for nearly a year - spreads and execution are dreadful. I entered a stop once which I could not manually overide when I saw my position was wrong....they executed at more than twice my stop limit of 30 pips...I threatened to report to FSA - in fact I filled in the forms and was ready to submit - IG gave me 12pips back - how generous.

Their spreads are not stable and can widen to 20 pips - I have watched them and seen my trading opportunities go to waste. If I'd gone to a casino at least I could have met some interesting people!
Poor

I found ig easy to use and simple but thats where the positives stop.

There spreads are massive and executions rubbish especially on a quick moving price.

My advice is stay well clear IG index.
IG Index

I have been a user of IGIndex for just over a year and have become increasingly disillusioned with their service.

The dealing interface is simple to use and exceedingly easy to navigate. But the benfits this brings are simply outweighed by the wide spreads and the far too frequent refusal of bets; a disheartening proportion of which then proceed to move in your favour.

As far as I am concerned, if a company advertises that "the price you see is the price you get", then you should NEVER have a bet refused, far less having bets refused with the frequency I have experienced.

Combine this with index spreads which are uncompetitive and the absence of a rolling cash facility, then I would not be approaching IGIndex as my first port of call if I were starting out spread-betting today.
IG Index

I've used IG Index to SB for the past few months, overall i've been impressed with them, expect last night.

I saw a dow UP Binary bet quoted at 0/3 so i bought it at three, it went up within seconds to 30 somthing and then the dealing interface closed and would not let me close the bet.

Then i got an e-mail saying my bet had been deleted! I e-mailed IG and requested that they ring me before 8.30am this morning it's now 8.30am and no call!!!!!
IG INDEX

I have been using IG Index for just over a year now, i'am convinced their trading platform is one of the most user friendly systems around.

It provides a great deal of variety in quoting prices for various markets but the charting package provided is quite limited, good for checking historical price movements but does not have the facility to add various studies such as bollinger bands, moving averages etc. Although the RSI volatility is available. The charts are limited to UK & US shares and indices. The trading platform would be best used in conjunction with another charting source to met individual requirements.

In terms of quotations, what you see is what you get. But in comparison the real cash market for the Dow or FTSE their prices are a bit out of the ball park. The SPOT FX quotations are inline with interbank market. The commodities prices are not too bad either.

I deal on a controlled risk basis which requires a stop loss on every single trade i make, the occasional times i do get stopped out, is always at the pre-determined price. There is the facility to change the stop loss level when the position is still open.

The spread is always charged on opening a new position, current FTSE in market hours 6 points, Dow an extortionate 11 points, SPOT FX 9 points.

Overall i rate this broker 7.5/10
laughable

the truth is IG has the biggest spreads in the business, and it's no surprise your order is executed immediately as a result. coupled with them skewing the prices so in a worse case scenario you have to find the spread plus two points all multiplied by two. a 6 point spread quickly becomes a 16 point spread.

their software is more intuitive than deal4free's and their support is fine, but then again you would expect this as they are slowly fleecing you of your hard earned money.

if you love risk and losing money then this company will suit you perfectly.
IG INDEX

The trading platform is very easy to use, I have found it to be 100% reliable. If it has one drawback then it has to be the very limited amount of tick data shown in it's chart. Their quoted prices are pretty much in line with the actual market prices.

Orders are filled very quickly indeed and confirmations come through in an instant. However even if there is a delay of a few seconds the price you get is exactly the price where you pressed buy/sell, there is no re-quoting.

Control risk bets are available and the cost is included into the initial spread, the only drawback is I have not found a method of moving stops to protect profit.

Telephone support is polite, professional and prompt. As for training I have not attended any of their seminars but I intend to in the near future.

Value for money, all charges are taken on the opening position, therefore I know exactly what I must expect my trade to do before I make break eave/profit.
IG Index Spread betting

I've used IG Index for last 6 months. They old trading platform wasn't impressive at all. But they have launched a new java based platform since 7th January. It is very good. Apart from realtime execution, you can have access to DowJones news, a very good charting (unfortunatlly with 15 minutes delay) but it is still very useful for historical charts and for people who do not have access to other chartings like CQG, Reuters graph ...

They spread between popular stocks are very narrow and in a big size trades it is better than trading CFDs or stocks.

I would recomend it to all.
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