Thanks Simon, the new platform is definitely worth the wait.not on holiday
new platfrom has been delayed, but not because the platform has problems but because the data transfer is proving to be difficult.
trying to be absolutely sure about every open position/cash balance/client information/new orders/stops/limits etc etc etc is just a tad difficult.
As those of you already on our new platfoms will know the speed and reliability is awesome. Unfortunately ensuring that every single bet (including some guy with a £1 bet in dollar/polish zloty) plus stops and limits and any new orders is transferred correctly to the new hosting site is very difficult It has to be tested ..re-tested...altered..re-tested..altered..re-tested ad nauseam before the final trigger is pulled.
CS looks to be sometime in september but the new front end (as an intrerim measure) is far faster (for non dealer intervention) than previous incarnations.
And, yes, i do know that those put on dealer intervention still have the same situation.
For those of you who seem to love DMA the conversation i had over lunch should be instructive. A prop dealer who i have known and respected for many years....trades in 2 to 10 contracts in the FTSE/Dax .... when he places a stop in the 'real market' in just 2 contracts he hardly ever gets his price. ... the average fill price is over 0.5 pips away (1 to 2 pips in the Dow) from his requested level. (he never holds positions over trade data releases)
He compared this with his spread betting accounts where his stops were always honored at the requested price! On the other hand he liked DMA because psycologically his losses were not atributable to his counterparty. In reality the problem dealers have with SB companies is that when they lose it is the SB company who gains. With DMA there is no obvious counterparty and (therefore) nobody to blame.
all in the mind
i am really sorry to tell you this but we really do not care about winners and losers... what we care about are traders who we identify as overtrading on latecy issues. We might be wrong and the client might be completely innocent of all suspision but there are some 15 SB companies out there and innumerable DMA platforms. So the removal of auto trader status with CS shud not be 2 much of a problem. Just move on to the next provider... hardly difficult.
As i was asked (by a trading partner) i did an analysis of Marked risk clients (that is big winning clients who we hedge) versus auto clients (those on dealer acceptance). The correlation was less than 15pc !! This showed to the partner that we were not interested in the individual trades but in the overall risk to LCG.
Simon
It seems like I have to keep bothering you about the MiFID "Best execution" directive in the future, even after you have transformed to the new platform.