If Done Orders

Orion

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“If Done” Orders

When deal4free introduced “if done” orders some while ago I asked why they were only available on CFDs and not on spreadbets and was fobbed off with the excuse that it was prohibited by the FSA! Several phone calls to the FSA confirmed that this implausible story was just not the case. After all, surely it is in the interests of the consumer to have access to “if done” or “linked” orders to avoid the possibility of an entry buy stop being actioned without a safety sell stop then being inserted manually, thereby giving rise to potentially unlimited losses. I for one consider them an absolute boon and a definite aid to trading.

In practice an “if done” order translates into: “I’m going out to play golf now, so please stop me in long on the FTSE at £10 per point if it rises to 4500 but if it does, and I am stopped in long and therefore exposed, please also immediately put in a sell stop at 4450 to protect me and limit my losses if the market suddenly plunges while I am on the sixteenth green”.

Six months or so after my original enquiry I again approached deal4free and again was fobbed off. I contacted the FSA a second time and they repeated their original advice, also referring me to their spreadbet book of rules which incidentally can be accessed online at their website. True enough, there was no mention of any restriction.

Perhaps our contact at Capital Spreads can enlighten us as to why the spreadbet firms deny traders this facility.
 
Iv'e also questioned cmc about this and got fobbed off. Can't remember what the excuse was but they say they have no plans to introduce linked orders.

I have yet to find a sb company that do although I am sure it would be simple enough to do (particularly for cmc who offer it on cfd and fx accounts using the same market maker software).

I am sure the first one that does will get a flood of people including me opening accounts!

I suspect it's something to do with the fact that when people do get stopped in to a position and they are out playing golf, they don't get chance to put a stop loss in and end up losing big if the market goes badly against them. Quite convenient for the sb co!
 
I opened a spreadbet account with D4F because of the "If Done" facility documented in the userguide and confirmed on the phone. When the account was operational I phoned and after a conversation consisting of "you press this, and should see it", I was asked "what type of account is it?". The rest is history.

I can not operate without "If done" orders, I only trade out-of-hours :-0

I can see why they do offer "If done" orders - the prices you can place stop/limit orders is so far from reality that they would be faced with having to accept an order that was too near the market :rolleyes:

Andrew
 
I think the issue here is more of a legal one...

Trading comes under the Investment rules
whereas...
Spreadbetting comes under the Gaming rules

More advanced tools are offered to traders as they are intellegent
whereas spreadbetters are just dumb gamblers betting on the direction

i do think its actually so that they don't confuse the the issue of betting and trading

At least thats the impression i got from talking to them

If the authorities thought they were the same just under a different name then they might want it changed and taxable
 
ColinRiche said:
More advanced tools are offered to traders as they are intellegent
whereas spreadbetters are just dumb gamblers betting on the direction

Colin, I have no empirical evidence to support this, but I suspect there are as many dumb gamblers trading the markets as there are intelligent traders using SB as part of their strategy.

BTW - "intellegent" is normally spelt "intelligent"... :eek:
 
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