Broker with biggest range of UK shares?

[dmorris]

Hi all!

I'd like to know which broker has the biggest range of UK shares available as spread-bet products.

The best I've found so far is IG with around 900, but my strategy works best with even bigger ranges. (My modelling has been based on all ~3800 of the LSE shares.)

Does anybody have any advice as to the best broker in terms of LSE coverage on spread-bets?

Thanks,
DM.

 

[the blades]

Hi all!

I'd like to know which broker has the biggest range of UK shares available as spread-bet products.

The best I've found so far is IG with around 900, but my strategy works best with even bigger ranges. (My modelling has been based on all ~3800 of the LSE shares.)

Does anybody have any advice as to the best broker in terms of LSE coverage on spread-bets?

Thanks,
DM.

Man group will offer quotes on any share with a market cap above £10M. I know IG quote above £20M, and suspect they will also quote down to a cap of £10M.

I suspect there are 900 shares posted on IG's website? Above £10M would widen your scope from 900 companies, wouldn't it?

Obviously, you'll get some stinking spreads on the companies capitalised down to only £10M. No doubt you've allowed for this?

Cheers,
UTB

 

[dmorris]

Thanks

Man group will offer quotes on any share with a market cap above £10M. I know IG quote above £20M, and suspect they will also quote down to a cap of £10M.

I suspect there are 900 shares posted on IG's website? Above £10M would widen your scope from 900 companies, wouldn't it?

Obviously, you'll get some stinking spreads on the companies capitalised down to only £10M. No doubt you've allowed for this?

Cheers,
UTB

Thanks for the reply;

All I have is historic EOD data; so I don't actually know the market caps of the ~3800 shares in my analysis set. In an effort to simulate IG's £10m market cap. min. I've restricted my full share-set by excluding stocks < 200p. This takes the ~3800 LSE stocks down to ~900. Unfortunately, my strategy payoffs suffer quite dramatically after this!

I'm using a total spread of ~6% in my model (3% on open, 3% on close); I _think_ that this represents the worst-case spreads (based on IG's dealing handbook.)

What I'm finding out is the dramatic difference between a sanitized computer model, and the nitty gritty of the real world!

I'm pretty sure, though, that the overall profitability (more accurately cash-liquidity) of my strategy correlates directly with the total share range that it's exposed to; i.e. the more shares, the better. Coming down from ~3000 shares exposure to ~900 (assuming these 900 are ~= all LSE shares >200p) reduces the success/failure ratio (on monthly periods, last 10Y historic) from 2/1 to 1/1.

This in turn means that I'm exposed to potentially many months of continual losses before a month or two of bigger wins. While that's still great, it's still frustrating because I know that with a bigger share-range exposure I should be able to take (albeit) small wins most months, as opposed to losses at least half of the months!

Anyway, thanks again for your input.

I think that my best bet for now will be to run the strat. on paper for a couple of months and to phone ALL the brokers I can find for every buy signal that I get. That may be the only way to really find this out.

I was hoping that some brokers already had a reputation for big coverage of the LSE, but it looks like IG's >£10m marcap is about maximal. I guess I'll just have to do the legwork of phoning up all the brokers every day for all of my buy signals...

D.

 

[the blades]

on second look, I'd suggest there are around 2,000 shares and investment trusts with a market cap above £10M.

A bit better than 900.

Once you go outside the FTSE 350, you'll find shares with greaterr than 6% spread. However, for non FTSE350 this'll be about right on average IMHO.

Cheers,
UTB

 

[dmorris]

Thanks

on second look, I'd suggest there are around 2,000 shares and investment trusts with a market cap above £10M.

A bit better than 900.

Once you go outside the FTSE 350, you'll find shares with greaterr than 6% spread. However, for non FTSE350 this'll be about right on average IMHO.

Cheers,
UTB

Oh, that's good to know, thank you!

It might have been a good thing for me to get the "bad news" that I might be restricted to a small subset of the LSE, because it's forcing me to improve the efficiency of my algorithmic triggers; I'm experimenting with deriving optimal open/close pos. strategies on a per-stock basis now, as opposed to simply finding a single open/close strategy that best matched the entire analysis set of stocks.

I'm hoping that will produce better entry/exit signals.

Thanks again for the input!

D.