CMC FTSE 100 Stock Prices

[tiger75]

Hello all from Australia,

CMC have been in Australia for about a year now I think and when they first started their share quotes were often quite different to the underlying stock. They have improved this however as time has progressed.

While there has been quite a bit of discussion on how they fudge the prices of indicies I am yet to read any discussion on how people have found their quotes versus the underlying as far as UK and US shares go.

Anyone with experience on this front?

 

[Skimbleshanks]

Hi tiger, and welcome to T2W

I do believe FTSEBeater may have experience of this, as do a few others so you may get some interesting feedback.

 

[ColinRiche]

Hello Sydney,

For UK stocks cmc follow the order book

For high volume stocks the cmc price will be the same as the market price.

For low volume stocks low volume orders in the book are ignored, so the spread will be greater than the market price but this
reduces the occurance of requotes.

Theres no point in them quoting a price if your unlikely to get filled
at that price hence spreads vary according to liquidity in the stock

This is the same for high volume stocks that have holes in the
order book or low volume orders.

The larger the trade you place the more likely of a delay or
requote as the system has to find the volume in the book to
match your order - not a problem for high volume stocks

For US stocks the liquidity is much higher on most stocks
so following the order book isn't really necessary so much
so cmc just add 4 points onto the spread for the trouble
making it a 5 point spread on the main stocks which isn't bad
considering thats the only cost involved - and in % terms 5 points is negligable - there are exceptions like 3M a high value stock which has a 15 point spread

i havent looked at low volume stocks under the $10 mark
but who wants to trade low volume high spread stocks anyway

Hope this helps

Colin

 

[FTSE Beater]

Hi Tiger

Welcome to T2W

I back-up what Colin has said.

• FTSE 100 stocks are fine, the price quoted is the actual one (apart from out of hours trading)
• FTSE mid 250 stocks has a wider spread and generally has a lot less volume
• US stocks have a 5c spread minimum which can be greater if the market is quoting greater. Also beware of delayed fills, as the US prices move faster

A word of warning though, it wouldn't be beyond CMC in Australia to have wider spreads than it's UK counter-part. Usually your datafeed will be able to tell you the true market spread, so you will have something to compare them with

HTH

 

[tiger75]

Thanks guys,

I swing trade and given that I just purchased a new home my options are to either paper trade or use CMC to continue learning.

Sounds like UK/US are probably more user friendly then Oz (not surprising given our very small equity base and volume versus the big boys).

The main problem is stops need to be placed 3x the spread from the current bid/offer, problem being that can often be close to a whole days range, especially if you are trying to set stop entries after hours for the the next day.

0.05 is far less intrusive on a 2 or 3 dollar stock then it is on a 30 dollar one.

I'm really enjoying this Board, its far less agressive then one's in Australia tend to be.

 

[JonnyT]

<i>I'm really enjoying this Board, its far less agressive then one's in Australia tend to be.</i>

Unfortunately so are our Cricketers, but the Rugby lads have toughed up to give the Aussies a good pasting...

JonnyT

 

[tiger75]

Yes - our Rugby team is struggling just at the moment - poor form tends to follow our teams when-ever we are hosting any major event. Our one day cricket side crashed and burned the year we hosted the Cricket world cup as well.