IG

Thieves (In My View)

IG is corrupt to the core. Never ever give your money to these people, it won't take long for them to find a way to take it from you. I've dealt with many brokers, most not good, but IG are the bigger thieves in my view.

Pathetic

I have been trying to setup a new account with IG also for the past 2-3 weeks. They are pathetic. It is painful in how incompetent they are and I am shocked they have any customers.
I agree with the comments below in that how can anyone trust that they would deal with a real issue with any priority and basic ability. I think mentally deranged chimps could do a better job.

I opened an account with a competitor around the same time and they actually called me and made sure everything was setup correctly and I was happy. I guess there are no bananas in their break room.

Terrible customer service

I've been trying to set up a new account with IG for 3 weeks already, and it's still not done :-D. I can only imagine
how terrible is their customer service when you need to do something more serious, like withdraw funds for example...

Avoid using for Binaries its a bucket shop more you win the more they want you to go away!!!

Avoid its a bucket shop for Binaries. They do not like winners. The favourite way to make you lose your money is they tamper with the execution. I am talking about Binaries here where speed of trade execution is everything.
Your losing trades will nearly always without fail get accepted. But when it comes time to Close the trade to take your profits this is where it becomes obvious they are tampering. You either get a long delay where you cannot do anything while they manually examine the price to see if its moving in their favour or you get a rejection then the market has moved away so you either lose money or by the time you try again the binary has expired or got within 30 secs of the expiry so you cannot do anything.
This has been going on for well over a decade now but as Binaries are not a regulated financial instrument there is nothing you can do except avoid using IG Index. Shame the FCA do not force them to state the timestamp accepted/rejected & delay time in a loggable format so the customer has absolute proof. This would then make the underhand practise go away as you can prove it so they would not bother trying that anymore!!
Shame as everything else on their trading platform is superior to the other offerings I do not even think they would lose much if they did allow instant execution as it would be made up for by the volume of customers they would attract & someone will always lose to guarantee their profits when they get overconfident & or the tight spread causes a misjudgement on the price action required!
I have used them on/off for well over a decade nothing ever changes either. Also like others have said in their reviews here they tamper with large winning positions so you appear to either lose it all & or they somehow change your pricing data so you see on their trading platform such a drastic price movement you close either with a loss or greatly reduced profit!
I am not talking small amounts of money either I have been up over 14K on a single trade then due to them manipulating my price data its dropped to 1.4K in the blink of an eye & lurched into negative a few times but as soon as I closed the position their underlying shot back up to the true price on the open market costing me well over 12K!!
You see underhand tactics they have the playbook as they wrote it you cannot possibly beat them over time they will wipe you out & put you into serious debt if you let them!

If you are wise Stay Away!

Be very careful using this broker for spread betting.
It seem widely recommended, from my experience instead I could say there are a lot of suspicious behaviour around it.
Spreads widen disproportionately on occasion (as much as 3%), slippage is another huge component (I have been closing positions when showing an amount but when cash out the value was a little lower, always) and finally position closed microscopically with loss several times, when the price of other providers did not go there either in buy or sell.
I have the feeling your battle is not just against the market but against the broker too.

Account application refused - lack of any logic.

I use prorealtime and really like it. I tried to join IG so that I could use prorealtime to read charts and execute with one platform but was refused due to lack of income and liquid assets. I do own two property's outright. It does leave a question mark about their ability to sufficiently manage their own risk. If they cannot stipulate the account size or leverage amount without also saying that you must earn a certain amount (clearly to keep the option open to retrieve losses) then they are not exactly offering a reassuring message.
To add: they then rang me a week later to ask me to complete my application - they had no record of themselves turning down my application. When the issue of not sufficient credit was explained I told them other brokers were not stipulating a liquid asset level as high as theirs but I was told this was not true. Sorry, but I have had accounts with Go Markets, FXCM and Dukascopy in the last year and always gave the same details - they were happy with the asset level and deposit level. I understand prorealtime is available with Interactive Brokers and a 5,000 Euro deposit. This would definitely be my preferred option to IG in this scenario. Failing that, I will happily continue with Dukascopy for execution.

Not really

I was registering to IG a while ago, so many "good" advertising in some social communities and my wish to have at least one CFD Broker which I could use beside Futures and Options I do with other brokers. After Marketindex was closed IG should be a replacement, at least I hoped so
In the end I transferred money there but still testing out the plattform, trying to adjust the UI and get a pragmatic workflow with their application. Of course one shouldn't compare the UI with standalone applications but I was shocked how simple and not adjustable most things were. Most paid and free sites I know are way more flexible and usable. Not to forget the history of data, sometimes way to short (just a few days or even not this) to get an overview. But maybe trading within two or better three timeframes I shouldn't expect. If that would the only thing, great but it was one of many things keeping me away from really using the platform for daily trading. It was quite irritating that so many people I knew in one forum (not here) were using IG so intensively, actually people who knew what they were talking about. Having used Marketindex (with the Oanda-Platform underneath) a long time and CMC and more the experience with IG was more than disappointing. Last but not least the market spread even during low volatility was partly on a shocking high level. Many times I asked myself why the hell should I pay that much knowing so many other brokers with usable UI and compelling costs?
Many times I tried again and again, so many people can't be wrong with their decision for IG but the platform is not for serious and daily work and trading is way to expensive.

Why I Dumped Them

Removed my funds & stopped dealing with them after they deliberately manipulated a binary trade to create losses for the majority of traders in that particular position.

IG are a sly Market Maker - continually changing the goalposts

I wish I could say something nice about IG Markets, but I can't... maybe I can say a few things.
I have been trading full time now for over 5 years. The first broker I used was IG. They were a very good platform to learn on due to the very small contract sizes. The prorealtime charts are also excellent. Once I started making money I openned an account with MF Global. They were great until they went under. Having lost most of my trading capital I went back to trading with IG Markets, afraid of putting my money into another broker and I perpetuated with them for too long.
I have had many instances where trades have been rejected.... almost all of them highly profitable trades. Speaking with the staff at the help desk they came to the conclusion that it might have been a "flash error". Ok, I gave them the benefit of the doubt. So my solution to the "flash error" was to write my own trading application built on top of their REST API. Using this, I thought great... no more errors in getting my trades submitted. But guess what happened??? you guessed it, rejected trades. I rang up to find out why the trade was rejected and the reason was: "The markets were too volatile, so we turned off the ability to trade in the API". "You what" I said... You have got to be kidding me. IG has cost me at least $20000 in missed trading opportunities where I pressed the button... most of them were very profitable within 5 minutes. If I traded the real futures then every single one of them would have gone through.
It seems to me that the moment they detect that there is a situation where they are going to lose money, then they attempt to stitch it up. This kind of behaviour I find intolerable... so off I go to a real broker, not a broker that has no interest in me winning my trades.
So if you are considering IG Markets, my advice to you is, train yourself up with very small amounts of money... and once you start making money consistently then stop using them.

rock solid track-record and policies in 'swiftly' bankrupting their clients

Like no other company IG bankrupts their clients/victims with 'swift' action, in the most cold-blooded way.
Their track record in doing so is without comparison in the industry: http://www.smh.com.au/business/when-brokers-are-the-enemy-20100827-13w40.html
In case the link does not work google: When brokers are the enemy - Sydney Morning Herald
Personally, I was robbed of a six figure sum - and earned cynical comments from their Credit department - the abyss is so unbelievably deep, there is only one advise for retail traiders: RUN AWAY, spend your money on something nice, treat yourself, be good to yourself

They treat clients like wolves kill sheep

They treat clients like wolves kill sheep - I remember the first time that Twitter released a trading update warning on 05/02/2014 and Twitter went down by some 20% - my stake was GBP10 per point. They spiked my stop and instead of winning some 20k I ended up some 5k underwater because they closed the trade on the pre-opening before any trading had taken place. I complained and when their dealer called me I could hear him chuckling and rubbing his hands in glee and in the most arrogant manner he told me 'I was unlucky! Yeah right!!!!!'
I find IG arrogant and having had business dealings with them I can say they are arrogant with a false sense of self-importance; sadly as in most of the City ethics don't come first in their business dealings. Steer clear.

Andy

Trade with a non market maker broker, they take a commission, nothing more, or at least, trade with a broker that will not try to take 100 or 200 times the money you can afford to lose.

IG Markets is market maker on his the CFD.
So, they manage their prices on their products.

IG Markets chases negatives balances of their client. In 5 minutes, they can claim you 100 or 200 times the money you can afford to lose.

Without stop loss, you take an enormous risk to finally lose (potentially 100 or 200 times your balance account), it's obvious.

With stop loss :
When you win, you can see on forums many people complaining about stop orders executed, while the real underlying only went several points away !!

When you lose, they will not execute your stop order if they cannot trade a hedge on their side !! For example, the EUR/CHF quoted more than 1.17 one minute (which already is a very long time) after the PEG removal, but they finally executed the orders at 0.925 !!
And after this "treatment" of your positions, they will go after you to take the negative balance on your account (potentially 100 or 200 times the initial balance of your account), which is : the loss they managed (by not executing your stop order) !!!

My advice : Trade with a non market maker broker, they take a commission, nothing more, or at least, trade with a broker that will not try to take 100 or 200 times the money you can afford to lose.

This last point is very easy, just see the list of brokers that forgave negative balances of their clients after the EUR/CHF PEG removal.

Passing market losses to their clients

It appears that they are simply betting against their clients in every way possible, hiding behind their terms & conditions. IG seems to treat their clients in any way they like. If they are losing money in their market positions or something just doesn't work out for them, it seems that they can simply pass the losses onto their customers. If they make money, well, it is good trading on their part and naturally keep the profits for themselves. They don't execute your limit orders when the market goes to your limit order (by showing wide prices) or give you any improvement (if market quickly moves through your limit order), but they would happily pass you an unlimited slippage on your stop order when it suits them... They are not really providing a trading service, they simply appear to be chasing your cash. Stay away...!!

Will let you down when you need them the most

Take a recent example.... EURCHF move. They did not react for ten minutes. They missed all volume at semidecent levels and filled clients with a 2600 point slippage. Unlike some competitors, they are chasing negative balances.

Where Amateur Traders Go To Die

The amateurs who roll up with 5-10K accounts are hoovered up in no time, in fact if you can't afford an account manager then 'forget about it'. My advice is, take your 10k to Vegas and lose it there, at least they will give you free drinks on the way down. There's a reason you don't pay taxes on Spread Bet accounts, it's because the Inland Revenue is to busy laughing from behind the sofa.

Be careful

I have no dought but they run against you .If you place a stop, they run to the stop.
Like a casino when you start you win, then everything changes , and you are taken to the clener .

Most of those ganecy and broker they use the same software all linked to eachother, they run super computer software that ordinary person does not know .
They can run the price down until all traders are clened up ! They earn commission for this , two commission, yor money and the bank stock money !

Those firms they appear to be regulated, yes we know they are regulated by crooks !

Of course any casino has his winner otherwise no one would want to go there ! its the same here ,

on 100 traded tickets going long , 97 % of them the rpice go down . It shows how verything its very well rigged against .

Save your money !

Disappointed

All I need to say is I am disappointed. Didn't realise how good my previous broker was.

Same tricks

Beware the small print '...prices are indicative only'
Gave IG another chance with their DFBs as execution is good (provided you don't go in at market it almost mimics DMA, that's obviously the aim) and the platform has always been v.nice. But it's a mirage, watch for old tricks.
e.g. Nice EUR gap Sunday night open gave a quick 11 points, but they turned a blind eye to that as presumably there weren't many traders... or if I let paranoia get the better of me maybe that was just my price. But I don't mean it was a flash move up/down, I mean it was up for 30 mins or so with IG quoting 10 points off the mark and with a wildly fluctuating spread. If they were that blatant at peak times they'd be out of business.
Then tried them again, not because I suddenly trusted them but because I liked their deal-thru charts from ProRealTime, and this time suffered truly epic slippage. Which is bizarre as I don't believe these small bets are actually traded through the underlying markets. And they didn't do me the honour of adjusting my stops & limits accordingly, just money straight out of my account and into theirs.
Spoke to their customer service guy and he blathered on about how '...all trades go to the underlying market... well nearly all... well, some don't... well most go through... ok some are in-house' and that's all I needed to hear.
I don't trust any spreadbet co. from past experience so watch for the tiniest impropriety, I'll not get mugged again. So now just left with Prospreads so if they do something daft guess I'll have to get a proper job.
One point might seem harsh given everything else seems fine but you can either trust someone with your livelihood or you can't.

By the way, when you leave these clowns make sure you close your account and not just withdraw your funds. I read somewhere they'll charge an admin fee for inactive traders. So even when you've left they'll still try to bleed a little out your bank account.

worst experience with IG

hii i am trading with IG and having a nightmare of an experience worst spread betting company in my opinion.. Initally they are good but once you start making money out of them then the real problem starts... trades get monitored and rejection rate increases .. especially binary and options trades... in binary trade even small size of 2 pound goes to the dealing desk and options trading is on dealer refferel...IG has all the products but when you start making money every trade is on a dealer refferel.. and every second trade gets rejected.. in my opinion one of the worst companies to spread bet with .. regards

New Low Spreads - until the market opens!

Noticed that IG Index increased their spreads on one US stock form 10 to 136 when the market opened. However, on 4th Jan they increased the spread on a large S&P500 stock from 13 to 517! Don't be conned by the low spreads statements!