IG Index dispute - advice welcome!

I'm not saying they did the right thing. It's only fair (and pretty amusing) to see that a lot of people still won't touch ome SBs that had bad reputations with a barge pole, even when they launch new platforms and mend their wicked ways.
 
Hi,

As per the last few messages I too have had an issue with IG Index and the Nikkie on the 16 March. Before they suspended trading their in house pricing dumped the maket by over 800 points!! Closed and then reopened to pre in house pricing levels! This liquidated large positions on my end and though compensation of my losses to break even are offered I should be a few £k up (quite a bit actually). I have had a final response from them now but it is unsatesfactory.

"On 16th March 2011 you held bets with IG Index (IG) on the Japan 225 Daily and the Japan 225 (Jun) contracts which were “liquidated” at 9:33pm that evening.

You state that you do not understand the price that was quoted by IG at that time (circa 8000) and you have struggled to find the corresponding quote from anyone else or by cross referencing with Bloomberg, Globex or CME. You also mention that you attempted to call IG at the time of the incident but your “multiple” efforts were to no avail. You state that you had every intention to go long at circa 800 once you received some clarity but IG systems would not permit you to do so.

In relation to events of the 16th March 2011, you have been offered a settlement of £XXXX by the IG Dealing Support Desk. However, you believe this to be unsatisfactory. You also mention that IG were unwilling to respond to queries via email and wanted communication to be taken verbally including an offer of settlement. You also disagree with the “withholding of information” in relation to the pricing methodology used by IG on their Japan 225 contracts and you still require clarification on this. ...
......As you are well aware, events on 16th March 2011 were unusual. The effects of the Japanese Tsunami, which included the foreboding of a possible nuclear crisis, meant that there was significant activity in the underlying Nikkei futures, with the Japanese Yen also being affected. The latter unexpectedly gained strength (USD/JPY fell around 300/400 points in a matter of minutes) and, as per the enclosed Bloomberg print, the underlying Nikkei Futures, started to react at around 21:22. I should mention that on the evening of 16th March 2011, the underlying futures market, from which IG make their price on the Japan 225 (the Simex session), closed at 21:30 and did not re-open again until 22:45. Therefore, between these times (21:30 – 22:45) any price quoted on this contract by IG is, what is known as an ‘out-of-hour price’. Such pricing is usually based on volume seen in other markets and client sentiment that IG would be seeing at that time. The underlying CME Nikkei opens at 22:00 and this assists IG in making a price for the Japan 225 but, as this particular underlying instrument can be very illiquid and the market spread often very wide, IG may continue to make an out-of-hour price until the opening of the Simex. Thus, official “in-hours” on IG’s Japan 225 at the time of dispute was 22:45 – 20:15 and anything outside of these hours was an “out-of-hour” price. This, of course, changed shortly after the date in question to allow for the adjustment to British Summer Time (+ 1 hour).

So, as there were no underlying instruments trading from 21:30, IG’s task of making an out-of-hour price, whilst not impossible, would not have been made any easier. Added to this was the circulation of rumours that the Simex Exchange would not re-open and there was speculation that the Bank of Japan was going to start selling JPY to try and weaken the currency. Given the circumstances IG decided to stop making an out-of-hour price on the Japan 225 contracts they offer and stopped quoting a price at 21:36:58 with the level in the cash being 8085. However, up until that time IG were nonetheless making a price and this period was inclusive of the time at which your bets were closed (21:33).

In relation to the out-of-hour price that IG were making, I would remind you that you are essentially betting on an Over the Counter (OTC) product and as per Term 2 (2) of the IG Customer Agreement, you have acknowledged that IG “will act as principal (and bookmaker) and not as agent on your behalf.” Further to this, I would also allude to Term 5 (1) which states that:

“...The figures we quote will be in respect of the level of our Index and not the level of an Underlying Market, and you acknowledge that the level of our Index may be different from the level of an Underlying Market..”.

Therefore, whilst not wishing to sound dismissive of your complaint, I would contend that the sources, such as Bloomberg, Globex etc that you have cited in support of your claims, are not relevant.

As you have mentioned and as I am aware, IG did offer to refund you for the loss (£XXXX) which was the loss accrued on the bets in question. In light of the unusual circumstances of that evening, I believe that this was a reasonable offer and, moreover, in adherence with Term 10 (4) of the IG Customer Agreement:"

So take the losses back to break-even or chalenge an in house model that deviates from the norms on a major index by over 10% for a matter of less than an hour. This move has taken out a lot of longs and saved them a hell of a lot of cash.
Any views on Mifid and execution policies?

Thanks
 
It's the same old Catch 22 situation. You trade their prices, but they have the option to make errors for which they're not liable.
 
Agreed the Catch 22, but this time I am annoyed enough to simply purse further and even if positions not re instated cost their legal department more than it would have cost to be honest and not screw of customers!
Does anyone think I have a case here?
SB get away with screwing clients constantly and this is a nice clear cut example of a massive deviation from underlyings for a short time frame which calls into question the whole out of hours calc methodology and advertising of financial products using underlyings vs lala land pricing!
 
Agreed the Catch 22, but this time I am annoyed enough to simply purse further and even if positions not re instated cost their legal department more than it would have cost to be honest and not screw of customers!
Does anyone think I have a case here?
SB get away with screwing clients constantly and this is a nice clear cut example of a massive deviation from underlyings for a short time frame which calls into question the whole out of hours calc methodology and advertising of financial products using underlyings vs lala land pricing!

Has anyone ever won any dispute against IG?? They've got everything sewn up..
 
To be fair to IG they’ve offered you your money back so you haven’t lost anything. You may be angry at your supposed lost winnings – but IG Index do not know if you would have kept these positions open, saying that they would have been in profit now so they should give you that profit is unfair because, had they not been stopped out, you may have decided to close these trades at a different time for much less profit – or even a loss.

IG have admitted they made a mistake, you have not lost anything but seemed determined to pluck a profit figure out of thin air and say to them pay me this. Give it up, it won’t work. Just be thankful IG had the decency to give you your money back, and consider some better money management next time so you don’t end up losing £XXXX
 
It's worth going through the FOS, as IG will want to avoid that (it costs them money, win or lose).
 
In reponse to Hoggums,

I agree with your point and it is not about money management etc. and not my first trade by far. It is more about their out of hours price dropped 800 points when underlyings closed, they then closed loads of longs out and closed trading. When they opened trading again hey presto levels are back to pre their in house pricing levels! A nice little in house tank.
I should mention the positions were hedged vs other indexes and was playing a close in the spread between other indexes and the Nikkie. No other index moved by more than 1%. If any major market in the world falls, those around it would react even albeight not at a 1:1 ratio but definately more than 1% after billions of dollars gets wiped of one of the worlds largest Marcap market.
All too isolated and all too in their favour. One has to ask how many times and how many losses have incurred on prior trades and not taken notice or had such a clear discrete example of pricing failure!
 
Things are different now. When it is in the best interest of IG to use the underlying price vs their own, they do. See the stories recently on eurchf losses at IG. IG are a market maker when it suits them.
 
it very much depends on the market and how you deal with IG - when I trade online indices and FX with IG I fully expect them to make a market to me- in small cap equities and less liquid items which are only executable via phone ( never ever use their customer service team for this- get yourself an account manager) they will always hedge themselves - their risk in minimal.



Things are different now. When it is in the best interest of IG to use the underlying price vs their own, they do. See the stories recently on eurchf losses at IG. IG are a market maker when it suits them.
 
Hi,

I was a member some years ago, but I lost my log in details.
So This is my 1st post since then after rejoining.

I tried to do a search for disputes with spread bet companies. but I could not get anything to come
up under the title I searched for. ie "Spread bet company disputes". It maybe that I have not entered the details/ or worded the details correctly in the right way to obtain the results that I am searching for.

I just noticed however & just come across this thread with ref to disputes with a spread bet company.
but I can see that it has not been too active since 2011..and only the last two posts just having been made in August 2015.

I just wondered if anyone knows if there is any way to make a dispute against a Spread bet company if you disagree with their responses..(I prefer not to mention the particular company at this point..but it could also apply similarly to IG as in the past I have had some similar issues with them)

Two or three egs of recent issues that I have had...

When the market crashed on Aug 24th... their system went off line at CRITICAL Moment when the market bottomed...Phoning was out of the question when the market moved up 800 points in a few minutes... the question may be SHOULD their online system be able to handle such Market crashes.. How often I see their platforms fail at vital moments at volitile times.
This stopped anyone closing out positions or buying in at the bottom of the market..

Another issue... I attempted to sell the Wall street market at this weeks top...on the Sunday evening open...in the very first few seconds...23.00 hrs... The platform failed to show their charts price action.. but the price data on the buy and sell buttons did not appear to be altering too wildly in the opening seconds.... I tried to place 3 sell trades in the 1st minutes..

The system did not accept the trades. and I did not get filed.... after a couple of minutes the market had moved to far down for me to want to retry another entry to sell.

I called to complain. and they confirmed that I had attempted the trades..and the system did not accept them for some reason.. and they could not answer why the chart service was not showing the visual price bars. which I needed at this vital time to see what was actually happening.
This was a critical time to enter and no I did not want to be on the phone... I just wanted a system that worked when it should do..... I dont mind technical issues as long as they acknowledge and agree to accept a trade when I call to dispute ,as long as they show or have the evidence of my attempted trades..which they had.

BUT even then... they said I then had to send an email to dispute this.. and it could take upto 2 days. Meanwhile the market fell 500 points... I told them in an email I wanted to take some profit at a level reached to try to cover myself if the market recovered... and gain some profit if they would honor it.

Another issue I had ..with this comany and IG was On the 25th I had bought some Wall st ? Dow Sept 17000 and weekly call options...and the market rallied over 500 points in 2 days..
I expected a reasonable gain of at least to double my money ...

to my dismay.. these options had hardly gained at all...and made just about 50% on what Id paid.
Many a time in the past Id easily doubled my money on a 500 point move..

Yet this was during the what seemed very volitile period over a few days and they were offering very little gain on these call options.

upon querying this.. they said sometimes option volitily is what determines an options value.
and in this case this is one of those instances.and they were not valuing call options very favourably.. I suspect that
still had a bearish sentiment...but the increaes in value of the call options seemed VERY undervalued after seeing such huge market moves..

I felt rather cheated and I had this happen in the 2007 to 2009 crash..where I was overpaying for options .. seeing HUGE moves and then getting little gains... basically they can alter the Vol so much that when a market has rallied say in a few hours to a day..then they devalue the volitility..
and the value of those options show NO gain..

As this very rarely happens.. its very hard to really know the realities of what such options may be worth under such conditions.. they could be telling me anything... or maybe the market makers are just creating unrealistic valuations.

I feel I need a real expert to be able to investigate this for me..and wondered if one had such querys is there any sort of service or company/organisation that could investigate such complex issues..

also so many times have I seen my account values when holding options just litterlly disappear.. on what seem rather small moves in the market of a couple of days..and when the market comes back to simlar levels.. the values of the account has halved.

to me its all so easy for them to get away with it.. and I don't believe that are valuing these options correctly.. in such times they can make any excuse.

They also have been making huge wide spreads on the options.buy and sell prices. as much as 4 to 5 time more..on daily options and 2 or 3 times on monthly Sept options...

Yes the market has had days of huge moves.. but some days in between were more normal yet they still had such wide spreads...and well over priced options..

As I am not a trader with an account to sell options and take any advantage of that.. which is still high risk...and I think few people in spread bet companies would look to do... I think it seems rather manipulated and more or less makes it very unappealing to want to risk trading with them when they are so overpriced..
 
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Thanks for your reply and posting that link.

Ig Index have been around I believe since 1974. So they are no new company to the U.K.

I am not sure I fully understand the article from your link. the Currencies and Banks are not something that I am familiar with..along with something that happened in January that I was not aware about..but I can possibly guess what I think may have happened.

Would it be another case of their platform failing at a vital time and Clients not being able to do anything with their existing positions ..along with their changes of their so called Guaranteed stops..that I can never figure out as to why they have to be so far out. or as to why just a Stop loss is not sufficient...
especially if IGs Markets are NOT the real time markets on the actual exchanges...meaning that they can create market price valuation at times when the real markets are not even trading...such as they allow clients to buy options when
the real markets a closed such as for eg... Wall Street Closes at 22.15 hrs in the UK for 45 minutes. but you can buy certain options in that period.

so are they just a company that COULD allow clients to trade the movement in the markets and NOT ALLOW LIMIT moves in the real markets to effect clients positions if they have placed standard normal stop losses and the market say gaps through a stop loss. In the real exchanges , yes the client trading if they did not have a guaranteed stop could be subject to severe losses.. BUT does IG need to apply the same conditions to its clients..

and even in the real exchanges I am NOT really sure that I understand why a normal stop loss cannot be valid... at the end of the day a market has to pass through whatever price level that a stop loss is placed at.. I am Not really sure even how the main market exchanges really allow this. or what a gap down actually is...

when you see gaps.. sometimes that seems like the market did not trade. yet it must trade to move even when we see a difference in the bar levels.

I think that there really does need to be someone / organisation or a non IG complaints procedure to keep a close check on these companies when I read the responses to that article.

Another issue that I have with these companies is how they have standard spreads on Options all the way thru the day..even on daily options... they keep a spread the same be it at the start of a day or in the final minute...
ok on the wall st daily options for eg.. that in normal trading maybe 4 points..
between the buy and sell... If they wont alter the spread.. they should reduce the market price on the options accordingly.

when you think just how much they make on keeping those spreads the same each and every day on all the options that they offer.. depending how many clients trade them.. they have so much advantage to make such easy profits each and every day..




Spread betting firms such as IG Group can do what they want. It is a light touch regulated market in the UK hence so many bucketshops that have left the US have set up here.

New article on IG
http://www.financemagnates.com/fore...man-over-black-thursday-losses/#comment-18102
 
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With ref to the dispute indicated below that I had with a spread bet company some days ago.

I did get a reply...


When I tried to place my trades within the 1st minute of the open at 23.00 hrs.. The Buy and Sell buttons appeared ok and live.. and I was able to click on the Sell button to attempt to place my trades. but I got what was a Red Ticket saying trade had not been accepted or had failed...and as I explained.. this was my dispute with them as to why it never got filled.

There excuse / reason was....(Valid or invalid)...

That within the 1st few minutes of opening on the new week that starts at 23.00 hrs in the UK... that they delay a few minutes to make sure that all the markets that they have on their platform are all working ok...before they open the system up to accept the trades.

MY concern is I thought that they were supposed to be open and match with the real exchanges to be fair to its clients. or at least would honor such disputes if for some reason they had an issue with their system.

I think this was one of those occasional issues and its not what they do each new weekly open..

I will have to watch and test them carefully over the next few weeks to test them on the 1st minute by trying to place a small trade with tight stops..to see if they will be open in the 1st minute..

I don't know if other clients would think their reasoning is acceptable !

but I do know that it cost me a chance to have made a good profit..
and i am not impressed that they can not handle such issues..


Another issue that Id like to look into that I think has happened in the past..
when their system went down... and one was trying to get out of a position or take a profit...

that they have said.. if the system goes down... and you cannot get through by phone.. send an email and we will consider honoring the trade to the time the email was sent...In calmer times I think they have done this before.

but
When the Market crashed. and they could not handle the crisis and only had one person on the option desk...

I had done this with some options that I had.. but they would not honor the trades on that occasion.

What had happened was when the market crashed..a couple of days before Id bought call options.. and initially I thought they had lost more or less all their value as the crash was severe and the options went well out of the money..

but the market did have a 1000 point rally on the Dow..when it rerallied after the huge decline... I did make a initial phone call to ask why the platform had gone in active.. and could tell the person answering was under pressure and they only want to deal with larger clients in such conditions.. I asked he he new the price of my options and he did give me a last price he had noted of the top of his head but did not seem to want to check it out for sure...and I ended the call.as I did not think or realise at that time as to how the prices compared to when I had bought them and I did think they would be worth much less than what i had paid..

when such conditions occur.. the trade desk are in panic themseleves and not acting normal.. and you can tell when they will not want to deal with small clients. and they have told me they will always honor the big boys as 1st priority ..

At that time I did not recall what Id paid for the options in comparison.

and I could not check as the platform was down.

I then recalled I had also bought the same ones on IG... and I checked the pricing that had been similar.

I then found that they were worth more than I paid and wanted to sell them... which I did on IG as their platform was working..

But the other companies platform was still not..

I tried to call again but could not get thru.... I also had to go out..

so I sent them an email to explain and asked if they would close my positions out.
around the price he quoted me ...as I thought the market was still at similar levels.

Unfortunately they would not honor my request.. or to even close me out at a price that I had paid for them.

again as their platform had not been working ... at the earlier time I could not see what they options had been being quoted at...

and later could not get thru by phone..

They had once honored me in a similar past less volitile situation..

but as the pricing and conditions at this time were quite extreme they would not do so on that occasion.

I wonder if anyone has had any similar situations..



Hi,

Another issue... I attempted to sell the Wall street market at this weeks top...on the Sunday evening open...in the very first few seconds...23.00 hrs... The platform failed to show their charts price action.. but the price data on the buy and sell buttons did not appear to be altering too wildly in the opening seconds.... I tried to place 3 sell trades in the 1st minutes..

The system did not accept the trades. and I did not get filed.... after a couple of minutes the market had moved to far down for me to want to retry another entry to sell.

I called to complain. and they confirmed that I had attempted the trades..and the system did not accept them for some reason.. and they could not answer why the chart service was not showing the visual price bars. which I needed at this vital time to see what was actually happening.
This was a critical time to enter and no I did not want to be on the phone... I just wanted a system that worked when it should do..... I dont mind technical issues as long as they acknowledge and agree to accept a trade when I call to dispute ,as long as they show or have the evidence of my attempted trades..which they had.

BUT even then... they said I then had to send an email to dispute this.. and it could take upto 2 days. Meanwhile the market fell 500 points... I told them in an email I wanted to take some profit at a level reached to try to cover myself if the market recovered... and gain some profit if they would honor it.

..
 
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Check their execution policy statement and see if they mention this. Under FCA rules they must have a clear execution policy so that clients know how IG works for clients.
 
It is worth trying, and to see what they say...Also how other spread bet firms
operate with their policies in similar situations.

Lately I am really frustrated with their pricing since the big decline in August.

They seem to push the boat on certain days and have well increased or overvalued their option prices that make it too expensive or risky to trade with them if wanting to just buy straight calls and puts if one is trying to trade by direction.


Check their execution policy statement and see if they mention this. Under FCA rules they must have a clear execution policy so that clients know how IG works for clients.
 
It is worth trying, and to see what they say...Also how other spread bet firms
operate with their policies in similar situations.

Lately I am really frustrated with their pricing since the big decline in August.

They seem to push the boat on certain days and have well increased or overvalued their option prices that make it too expensive or risky to trade with them if wanting to just buy straight calls and puts if one is trying to trade by direction.


So with regards to the recent (Jan 2015) incident on the EURCHF, the FOS agreed that IG acted within it's terms and conditions. So how is it that they had to change a client's price from 0.9250 to 1.0249 ? Surely if IG were right, then there is no need for any changes. http://www.iggroup.com/investor-rel...ce/financial-ombudsman-service-case-outcome-0

In addition, FOS only investigated one client's complain in order to make a blanket decision. Is this right as I thought their mandate involved investigating each complaint on its own merits?
 
In addition, if the FOS and IG agree that 1.0249 is more reflective of the underlying price, then how on earth were people being filled by brokers anywhere from 1.19 down to 1.06? This is an absolute farce and I cannot believe the regulators are turning a blind eye
 
Rejection of 'online' orders during 'Limit-Down'

I would like to hear from anyone who suffered when NYSE invoked 'limitdown' on 24th August 2015 and some SB companies rejected the 'buy' orders online while they accepted these via phone calls. Some firms showed market closure by greying out the line or even showing LD symbol where some others did nothing to indicate the market closure and re-activation. Phone calls were not being responded to in time due to heavy call volumes.
 
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