Best Thread Capital Spreads

[Jbat001]

I have a bit of praise I wanted to share with you Simon, since praise where praise is due.

There was a very annoying incident this morning where a single tick at midday on the USD/SEK market caused the entire chart to skew into an unreadable pancake - was not amused!

I rang your contact number and spoke to someone called Sarah there. Not only was she polite and helpful, but she took ownership of the problem and sorted it out in pretty short order.

I've no idea who she is, but she's an asset to you!

 

[fmb]

The staff at CS have always been excellent when dealing with problems, a big plus. I would prefer never to have to deal with any of them Now if the system can be made as reliable as the office staff they will be on to a winner.

 

[capitalspreads]

wasp

i can appreciate that everyone wants the most comprehensive package available on whatever charting they are using. I am not sure exactly what metatrader's charts are like as I do not have an account with them. But one of the simple reasons for the difference is that metatrader are an FX platform offering only non exchange products (thus all the information is free). We quote and display charts of a huge array of other markets live from our quotes but these prices, no matter how we disguise them, do originate from exchange information. We use only our bid price is this makes it impossible for clients to back calculate the actual exchange prices from our historical chart information, as the exchanges insist on this. (I realise that some of our competitors do sail a little closer to the wind than us but we are not willing to risk exchange price bans or sudden demands for massive exchange fees). As our clients only trade off our quotes and the charts are built from these it should make no difference from a technical point of view.

jbat

thanks for the comment I will bring sarah's attention to your praise. Sarah is head of the customer services team.

fmb

i am in heartfelt agreement with you. The platform is constantly being upgraded and speeded up and sometimes we get ahead of ourselves. We are now making a big push to inrease the robustness of the platform (which is actually, when compared to our competitors, quite reliable especially in busy times). If we cannot give a good servce on the platform it irritates clients (and therefore tempts them to look elsewhere) and also stresses out our dealer and customer services units because as you can imagine we suddenly get a massive influx of client phone calls (understandably p****d off as well) when normally our phones lines are very quiet.

Anyway I hope that the smaller punters are enjoying the autotrader which we are testing on some markets at the moment.

Simon

 

[marlintrdg]

wasp

i can appreciate that everyone wants the most comprehensive package available on whatever charting they are using. I am not sure exactly what metatrader's charts are like as I do not have an account with them. But one of the simple reasons for the difference is that metatrader are an FX platform offering only non exchange products (thus all the information is free).

Simon

metatrader4 will do anything with spreads FX, CFD's Indexs,shares & futures etc. It's a SB co's dream & nightmare

mar

 

[wasp]

Simon,

I'm not sure where the confusion is entering here. All I asked is whether you were planning to upgrade your charts to incorporate more of the features that it-finance supply (ie, more indicators, more editable formats, change the colours, backtests etc). I didn't ask and don't particulary wish for the best they have to offer, if I did, I'd trade from my prorealtime charts as that IS the best they have to offer.

I want to be able to test ideas and bet from your charts prices and whilst I don't dispute the quality of your feeds and prices, it would just be nice to have those few more features a couple of notches up the scale of IT-finances products to make life easier.

 

[Sledgehead]

Hi,

Have read the last few pages with some concern as I was interested in CS. Seeing as I was not privy to the CS platform problems I wonder whether somebody familiar with the problem could just state:

a ) whether there was a problem in depicting price data
b ) whether prices became inaccurate
c ) whether trades were rejected
d ) whether account details became obscured
e ) when the above occured
f ) possible and know explanations
g) whether other bettors or exhanges experienced similar problems

Thanks for your help

 

[Jbat001]

Hi,

Have read the last few pages with some concern as I was interested in CS. Seeing as I was not privy to the CS platform problems I wonder whether somebody familiar with the problem could just state:

a ) whether there was a problem in depicting price data
b ) whether prices became inaccurate
c ) whether trades were rejected
d ) whether account details became obscured
e ) when the above occured
f ) possible and know explanations
g) whether other bettors or exhanges experienced similar problems

Thanks for your help

For what (little it may be) worth, I've been with Capital Spreads since October last year. I've never in that time had cause to bitch much about their service, and I'm also very fortunate to be in the position of being in profit (for the time being, god willing). I've never detected any sharky behaviour or slipping of my trades, and while I won't (indeed can't use) CS for scalping, I'm more than happy to recommend them for a swing trade or longer.

Literally the best option is to open an account and make your own mind up. You can trade VOD, for example, at £1 a point with a mere £4 of margin in the account (you'd be mad to do so, having said that), so it doesn't cost a lot, and an informed personal opinion is worth many garnered opinions on a board, even one as good natured as this. Don't listen too much to the naysayers, go in with just a little bit of healthy scepticism and have a punt!

 

[AC007]

CMC has same spread for SB as CFD. Why traders use others and pay bigger spread I wonder.

 

[Jbat001]

CMC has same spread for SB as CFD. Why traders use others and pay bigger spread I wonder.

Likely because CMC requires you fund your account with at least £1000 at all times, which shuts out a lot of the smaller punters, and when they get to the higher levels of £20,000+, they tend to go for direct access rather than SB.

 

[coolTrader]

Your system is playing up again!! Seems to happen every Monday now. I am stuck in a position and your system just stops working!!

 

[talkingcents]

Fire your IT dept NOW!!

[Just phoned Customer Support they are down again with problems. Come on Simon think its time you invited us in to pull the trigger !
That way we are sure the necessary action is taken.
Take our losses out of the IT department wages and see how much sharper they become.
This really is not good enough.
I have recommended many people to use CS but not any more
A great shame.

 

[eek]

To be honest as a decent .net programmer the error page I'm seeing shows how bad your developers actually are.

A custom error page and something to hide the fact that network support appears to have knocked a database offline is 30 minutes work. 29 minutes to create a nice error page and 1 minute to change the web.config file to point at it.

 

[david2000]

Similar sentiments talkingclients, always a Monday morning and other critical times. Monday mornings are probably due to staff rolling in late.
But if you are using technical levels, they also make sure the quote doesn't get levels if a turn is expected. Compared to CMC and IG quotes, last week thier quote didn,t hit pivot points when they other 2 companies quote did on the FTSE.
5 mins before CMC etc hit, Cap Spreads quote was the same at 5885-7. As CMC's quote moved up to hit the 5894 level Cap Sp quote stayed the same so had a 6 to 8 point lower bid. As CMC's quote came back Cap Spreads waited at the 5885-7 level then once back through that level their quotes matched all the way back down to the 5870 area.
This wasn't a case of the screen freezing, it was pure price manipulation on Cap Spreads part.
The charts also matched the fact they shaved those 6 to 8 points too.

First problem, if you use technical levels your stops or limit orders wont get hit, but would on other platforms.
Second problem is, if you use their charts you may as well forget it, as this sharp practice renders them inaccurate and useless for trading. It happened on numerous occasions last week too, so it wasn't just a glitch.

It would be interesting to see what comments Capital Spreads make to defend this sharp practice. Also how they can claim they have a worthwhile charting package to, when they only reflect Cap Spreads manipulated market.

I certainly would not recommend them, and will not be using the platform very often in the future. I will stick to platforms that give a degree of reliability, and play fair on a level playing field.
Its hard enough making money in these markets without blatant sharp practices, when other platforms actually reflect the market.

 

[jezza888]

CS are bookies, plain and simple, your not trading the markets your trading against them. There is no excuse for the platform crashing at all. Sooner people realise this and try trading the 'markets' instead of the bookies the better it will be for everyone (except CS' wages of course).

 

[david2000]

jezza, I agree but so are the other more reputable Bookies CMC IG etc. But their is no excuse for the above..

 

[capitalspreads]

wasp

sorry about the confusion. We continually look at increasing the availability of products/analysis on our site but we have to be mindful of the total cost of doing so. For more tecnical analysis data you can look in our 'Technical Analysis' section. This has a great deal of information / charts / current analysis etc etc .

AC007
Into the cost of trading you must also add the rolling cost and the margin required. Capital Spreads charges Libor +/- 2% as opposed to +/-3% and we have margin that is regulated by your stop level and not by some arbitrary figure.

Simon

 

[david2000]

Any comments on your pricing versus your competitiors at turning points and inacuracies this causes with your charting software please and customers who trade off technical levels, capitalspreads??

As detailed above, or was that a sidestep of the 2nd most important issues after reliability?

 

[capitalspreads]

david 2000

as i have commented many many times on this thread we never, ever manipulate prices, arbitrary comments that we did not reach a level that was reached by a competitor are frankly not very useful because the chances are more likely that a competitor has adjusted his price to take out stops than that we would diliberately keep a price low (thus creating an arbitrage possiblity that can only cost us money). You must be aware that we have far more stop levels than limit levels so using your argument we should be all for extreme moves one way or the other to take out stops, not the other way round.

Our down time this morning is not something that i can readily defend. It has nothing to do with volatility or loading or any such problems. It had its root in a hardware failure which when replaced by the DR also failed. Shouting at IT seems to be all I can do at the moment but I am assured that everything will be up and back to normal v.soon. Athough we may have to take the system down for a limited time to implement the casheing transfer of information to a new server.

Down time means lost and angry clients which is understandable and destructive of value to our company.

Simon

 

[bracke]

Simon

I have no desire to add to your woes but.......the Market Information for the FTSE Rolling Daily currently shows the high for the day at 5854 whereas the graph shows 5849.

I appreciate that the graph is stated to be 'indicative only' but a 5 point variance on a narrow range is a bit much don't you think?

Regards

bracke

 

[capitalspreads]

brake

the charts give the high of the bid for the day. The Market information gives the low bid and the high offer.

The 'pre-market' high was 5848-54 when the spread is six wide and we (along with the other SB companies) thought that the FTSE was going to open some 25 points higher. The high in real time trading was actually 5849-5851. This is one of those strange time when the high bid of the day is actually inside the spread of the opening (out of hours) six point price spread.

So both numbers are actually correct !!

Simon